3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Crake]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?

Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.

However, then there's us. The people playing 3.5 and pf1, who want more control, who want to be able to play from 0 to 100, and yet at the same time people complain that the system is unbalanced, while it's that imbalance that gives them the very variety that they so enjoy.

I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

[Razade]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?

Outside of niche forums? I haven't found it to be the case and most report that it isn't even when discussing the general lack of balance had to contend with.


Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

The issue arises, and I'm sure I won't be the first to say this, when people want to play at different tiers of optimization and there's no real way to mediate that 100% of the time. A GM can't know every splatbook and resource the players want to field and saying no too much can be as damaging to a game as poor balance in the game system itself.


Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.

Probably. Appeal and popularity are only metrics for those two things and not in fact measures of balance or the benefit or lack there of within. A million flies eat crap, that doesn't mean that it's good for you to eat it even if it seems super popular.


However, then there's us. The people playing 3.5 and pf1, who want more control, who want to be able to play from 0 to 100, and yet at the same time people complain that the system is unbalanced, while it's that imbalance that gives them the very variety that they so enjoy.

Why do you care what people you've never met in person have to say about how you and your personal tables play the game?


I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

The imbalance is an issue even if user-end results indicate that it isn't and not in the same way user-end results make it appear to be when sourcing the imbalances themselves. A balanced system is better for everyone and the system itself than an imbalanced system is for people who either never see the imbalance because they're either not aware or play around it and a system that allows for a million options because of said imbalance.

Especially because the former, a balanced system, does not preclude all the options you want to have. It just makes them harder to implement because they need better quality testing. Which is a net win for everyone.

[Hackulator]

No it's not really a big problem. I also would definitely disagree with your description of using wizards as "playing 3D chess". Honestly, over optimization often leads to less strategy and tactics, not more.

[ExLibrisMortis]

For me, it's part of the appeal of the game, for sure. I know that it's a mess, and I accept it. However, a new player dipping into optimization for the first time may be unpleasantly surprised.

I think the unbalance is (almost) completely unintentional on part of the designers. I think they used easy-to-measure metrics like "total number of hit points" to balance, rather than looking at playtesting performance, which is much harder to do. As a result, content releases from start to finish seem to use a different balance point each time, which makes it possible to argue for almost any balance point to be the "true" balance point. And that means the discussion about balance is neverending.

If the published metagame (including Dragon Magazine class guides and such) had been of good quality, and the developers had made it clear that the game wasn't balanced in a way that most people expect when they hear the word "balance", then there wouldn't have been so much arguing about it, because you could just point at the developer and say "look, they intended it to be a mess, it says so right in the introduction". It wouldn't have made the game more popular, but maybe the people who got past that warning would've known what they were getting into a little better.

[ericgrau]

It hasn't been an issue in any game I've ever played. The main disparities have been between experienced players and inexperienced players, regardless of class and what not. Most people know not to abuse the system due to common sense. I've had plenty of games that challenge everyone without anyone holding back, except on abuse.

To play the theoretical plan for everything wizard you need to put in the effort of a college minor, and why would anyone intentionally do that?

Besides disparities in player experience, I have however seen power creep as a much larger problem than class and so on. i.e., those with stuff from more books. Even if they're only using the book to find something cool, it tends to be a little stronger than core. So often they're a little too strong unintentionally and that creates disparity issues if you're not careful. And many people like to use these books for the fun content, shifting what's "normal". And that's fine as long as you communicate and do a bit of difficult work to try to get everyone on the same level. But it's not the extreme disparity that comes up in theoretical discussions, and has nothing to do with class or tier or whatever.

So in practice the actual goal is making sure everyone has the same view on what's "fair". Not stopping someone from doing infinite wish gate loops which most players & DMs will laugh at as abuse. The actual issue is a lot smaller and more subtle.

[Crake]

Why do you care what people you've never met in person have to say about how you and your personal tables play the game?

I enjoy discussing the system and it's components.


The imbalance is an issue even if user-end results indicate that it isn't and not in the same way user-end results make it appear to be when sourcing the imbalances themselves. A balanced system is better for everyone and the system itself than an imbalanced system is for people who either never see the imbalance because they're either not aware or play around it and a system that allows for a million options because of said imbalance.

Especially because the former, a balanced system, does not preclude all the options you want to have. It just makes them harder to implement because they need better quality testing. Which is a net win for everyone.

I don't entirely feel that's true. To balance magic and mundane for example, you either need to bring mundane up to the point of being practically supernatural (which removes the capability of having a truly "mundane" mundane) or you need to drag magic down to the point where mundanes can compete with it (which removes the fantasy of playing an all powerful wizard). And there's a whole spectrum of middle ground between those two options, all of which is possible within 3.5 simply by picking and choosing the material you want to play with. If you were instead to "balance" the system around one of those levels, you're removing the ability to play in the other levels.

[RifleAvenger]

I agree that balance is often overrated. Especially for cooperative games (which nearly all TTRPG's are at heart).

I'm currently playing a mid-high op Druid in a 3.5 module alongside a party made exclusively of mid-low to high op tier 4's (Scout, Clawlock with fighter dip, Warmage, Hexblade). We did a session zero to discuss where I shouldn't be stepping on party feet (ex. if we don't NEED two meatshields, let the Battlecaster Hexblade take point while my elemental and summons help flank), and how to deal with having 2/3rds of the party well equipped for stealth and recon (Scout, Druid, Warlock, Earth/Air/Water Elemental) and 1/3rd not at all (Hexblade, Warmage). No one has yet to say they aren't having fun, even though I've been able to completely disable some encounters and I insist on abusing our party's stealth capabilities to set up one sided fights. Admittedly, we're only just getting to mid levels now.

Prior to that, we played (I ran) a game of all T2-3's, but with some serious difference in player competence in playing casters, and I got mostly positive reviews up until the group spent two months fighting a war of attrition with an enemy Cleric (even then, opinion was divided).

I also play and run Mage the Awakening, a game where Epic style ad hoc casting is PAR for course, everyone has the equivalent of spamable divinations at will, and starting characters can completely "Nope" the previous turn and try again. True, the game expects everyone to be playing a mage (though crossover w/ other game lines is possible), but the flexibility of the spellcasting system makes the entire thing inherently unbalanced in a way that most players of 3.x say breaks the game into tiny pieces.

All this is to say that, so long as you can set group expectations before game begins, a game doesn't need to be objectively balanced to be a coherent and fun experience for everyone involved. If anything, there are big issues with trying to force balance, namely that the easiest (and most common) way to achieve it is homogenization and elimination of discrete options.

I think it's a trickier question for people who have to rely on pick-up groups though. It's also a negative that the system we're discussing pretends to balance, mostly by not making it clear how much stronger casters are than non-casters and via a preponderance of newbie traps.


No it's not really a big problem. I also would definitely disagree with your description of using wizards as "playing 3D chess". Honestly, over optimization often leads to less strategy and tactics, not more.Tactics maybe, since after a point it's mindgames and setting up immunities followed by an alpha strike that leaves one side dead. Strategically, however, I think optimization can actually deepen things. What do you spend your time on (including making more time)? Is direct fighting even the best option? Sure the party may be nigh invulnerable, but what about their loved ones, their subjects, their assets?

Assuming the setting is properly run to handle high-op PC's and their equally high-op foes, making any move at all without getting buried by other factions takes care, politics, and prioritization. Sure the PC's can alter the universe at their whim, but so can their enemies (and if the setting has any sort of stability at all, there is likely some sort of equilibrium or MAD that abhors casual large scale disruption of the status quo).

[Luccan]

Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

To the first, that depends. Was the purposeful creation of sucky feats to punish inexperienced players bad? Absolutely. And the disparity between say, fighters and druids, wasn't really intentional. So in that regard, I would say it's an issue. But. If you are willing to accept that as part of the game, I do think it can work to the system's advantage. And in a game where a certain power disparity is expected after x-level, on purpose, it could possibly even be decent design on purpose.

Huge ban lists are probably a generally bad thing, but I think that has more to do with people banning options they don't fully understand. Some ban lists are for thematic purposes, others to keep low-tier options from dragging the game down for one player and everyone else. And some are just because you don't want to play a game of unkillable gods. So, really, it depends on the person and reason behind the ban list.

The last question. No, there's nothing wrong with that inherently. However, this wasn't intentional. Sure, some ivory tower game design happened, but the creators of 3.X clearly over-valued weak options. Thus, imbalance can happen when it shouldn't happen. I'm glad 3.5 allows people to play at many different levels. I think most of that was accidental.



Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another?

Sure, but the game wasn't purposefully designed with that in mind. I mean, it kind of was, but 20th level fighter was, supposedly, as valid as 20th level wizard. Those levels were supposed to be the spectrum of power. And while there is certainly difference between a level 20 fighter and a level 1 fighter, that gap is similar or even greater between two equal level characters of imbalanced classes. I like 3.5. I would say it's a game designed in what can be very fun. I would not say all its aspects are well designed.



Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

It's the vocal minority that's still playing the game, sad to say. It's imbalanced and that can lead to issues. Not usually if you know what you're doing, but then a minefield isn't technically deadly if you know how to avoid all the mines (ok that might be a bit overblown, but you get my point).

You can absolutely balance things tableside. It is a natural necessity of a game where players know things can be wildly out of balance if they don't check themselves.

[Fizban]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?
Obviously my answer is: Nope, not in the slightest. Some people just really, really want to make a big deal about it, for various reasons they may or may not realize.

Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.
Not just the wide variety of power levels. There's a bunch of high and some low end stuff I'd be just fine permanently ripping out, hence my own lists, and there's a band I would prefer to stick in even if I'm not going to lock it down so far as to force things to stay there.

But another thing those other games tend to cut out is what I call Parallel Advancement Paths. One of 3.5's main and most abusable features is that you have a bunch of different things going on: class HD which includes BAB, saves, hp, and skill points, plus feats, plus class features, plus (often) spellcasting. That's five (5)! different tracks all advancing at once, 3/5 of them advancing in some way no matter what class you're taking, all mixing together in various ways, letting you get better at something in one way or multiple ways at once (I didn't even count ability points or magic items, make that seven different tracks, and that's not counting Affiliations or the game state/DM's own stuff). This doesn't have to result in massive power level gaps, but it generally does, because so many elements from parallel tracks stack without any attempt at making sure they don't stack too high.

Strip out the Parallel Advancement and boom, everything is way more boring and homogenized. 5e looks like 3.5, but there's only one track. There are no skills, just proficiencies you get at 1st. Feats are tied to specific classes, delaying and benchmarking them, and also come at the cost of ability points. There's just fewer choices to make, less difference between characters, period.

I also like the basic combat system, the positioning and tradeoffs between single attack/full attack/AoOs/maneuvers/etc. The fact that there are half a dozen or more different "primary" advancement systems or focii you can stick with (basic melee combat, ranged combat, arcane spellcasting, divine spellcasting, fixed list spellcasting, invoking, meldshaping, binding, martial initiating) is just more interesting. Even if I intend them all to play at the same power level, a ranger/warlock/warblade/cleric party is completely different from a warmage/favored soul/fighter/rogue party. It's my job to make sure that that difference does not include "unfun intra-party or extra-party problems," by whatever means necessary.

There's also the feature that the adventuring party is an adventuring party. 5e as the example again, they actually tried to make it so you don't need casters, by giving everyone daily healing and reducing tons of problems to just hit points and/or time. Which means that in theory, a gang of fighters is just as good at beating the big monsters as a team with a cleric and a wizard. And I don't want that, because it's boring. You're supposed to need a balanced team to succeed, you need magic to fight magic and skill at arms to fight skill at arms, magic to pierce mundane defenses and brute force to fight through magic-resistance, healing magic is different from attacking magic, heavy vanguard is different from lighter support troops, etc.

If I see a whole party of the same thing, then the focus of the game had best be shifting to "how do we possibly succeed without X?"

Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?
It is absolutely a natural part of the game. I dare anyone to show me a Tabletop Roleplaying Game that actually guarantees a good game without the DM making any calls, that says "if you have a bad game blame our rules and demand a refund." The only games that don't rely on DM calls are cardgames, boardgames, video games, etc. If you want the freedom to act outside of specifically prescribed actions, to play a character in a world, it can only ever be moderated by another person with the freedom to oversee those rules and that world.

Edit: cut the last bit I'd meant to save for later, if warranted.

[ezekielraiden]

Balance is primarily an issue because the *descriptions* in the rules imply it.

Long story short, 3.x straight-up lies to the player. It *says* a level of Fighter is equal to a level of Wizard, and that Toughness is just as powerful as Natural Spell (since each is 1 feat). These are both falsehoods. Anyone inexperienced with the system could not possibly know all the traps. That's why imbalance is an issue. It may be that it lets you do almost anything you want, but it does so by guaranteeing that those unfamiliar *will* do stuff they *don't* want.

Of course, there are other reasons. Stuff like the difficulty of challenging a party made up of 1 moderately optimized Fighter, 1 poorly optimized Monk, 1 ruthlessly optimized Cleric, and one slightly optimized Wizard. These imbalances make DMing much, much harder--which is bad because DMing is already scary and forbidding to many potential DMs, but the game *needs* a DM to work.
Those, to my mind, are the real issues; it's antagonistic to both new players and prospective DMs. That's unequivocally bad for the hobby.

Edit: Sorry Thurbane, no idea why it quoted you and not the OP.

[sleepyphoenixx]

It can be, especially for inexperienced DMs/parties.
It doesn't even take deliberate powergaming, just unfortunate party composition.

On the other hand 3.5s wealth of options is one of its best features imo and any system with that many moving parts is pretty much impossible to truly balance, so i really wouldn't want it any other way.

[Crake]

Long story short, 3.x straight-up lies to the player. It *says* a level of Fighter is equal to a level of Wizard, and that Toughness is just as powerful as Natural Spell (since each is 1 feat). These are both falsehoods. Anyone inexperienced with the system could not possibly know all the traps. That's why imbalance is an issue. It may be that it lets you do almost anything you want, but it does so by guaranteeing that those unfamiliar *will* do stuff they *don't* want.

As an aside, I've been toying with the idea of a feat points system, that will allow stronger feats to be more expensive and weaker feats to be cheaper, because I think, were natural spell to cost say, 6 feat points, wheras something like weapon focus might cost 1 or 2 feat points, it would make things certainly easier on players to identify the power of various options, while also making the more "trap" options more appealing due to their cheaper nature.

[flappeercraft]

I think the game is IMO horribly balanced, probably second only to calvinball (https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Calvinball). However, that is exactly why I like it tbh, because you can make whatever you want in whatever way you want at whatever power level you want. Want a unkillable god? Go ahead. Your average person but worse in every aspect? Sure man. Want to play heroes who are no gods compared to the real world but only powerful via skill? Also works.

It's its imbalance that makes it what it is, I would change nothing. Except maybe discarding some alignment restrictions for PrC's and Classes but thats a topic for another day.

[ShurikVch]

Let's see:
One Cleric is CoDzilla, another - healbot
One Wizard is "God" or "Batman", another - sticks to Fireballs and Magic Missiles

Eh, those high-tier classes are, probably, too complicated to balance; let's try something simpler:
Barbarian - Core vs Pounce, Whirling Frenzy vs Crafty Hunter...

Still too complicated!..

Fighter.
Dungeon Crasher... Zhentarim Soldier...
Core! Core Fighter!
Still, one Fighter is with two-handed weapon, another - sword&board, or TWF, or archer...

Dang it!..
Commoner!!!
No class features!!!
And Core only - so no 1st-April flaws...
Handle Animal... Bubs the Commoner (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=7097263&postcount=38)...
Argh!..

So, if classes aren't balanced even against themselves, how in the Nine Hells they could be balanced?

IMHO, the only "balance" which ever can be in the 3.X, is produced from cooperative work of DM and players

[DeTess]

I think the imbalance is only an issue when not everyone at the table is aware of it, and no efforts are made to ensure that either party is internally balanced, or that everyone is fine with their place in the power-pecking order. If everyone knows ahead of time what their build-choices will lead them to the imbalance is fine, but if someone thought he was going to play a badass barbarian, and instead gets to sit on his hands for most of each session while the cleric, wizard and Psion figure out how to win, it's not fine.

[Arcanist]

As an aside, I've been toying with the idea of a feat points system, that will allow stronger feats to be more expensive and weaker feats to be cheaper, because I think, were natural spell to cost say, 6 feat points, wheras something like weapon focus might cost 1 or 2 feat points, it would make things certainly easier on players to identify the power of various options, while also making the more "trap" options more appealing due to their cheaper nature.

Dark Heresy 2nd Ed does something very similar to this. Instead of levels, you spend XP on talents (basically feats and class features) and skill ranks and stuff like that. Talents are rated from 1 to 3, with 1 being very specific or having some sort of draw back to them or just being Toughness (which isn't a bad option in that game), to being able to make Knowledge checks without a penalty to them.

[Cosi]

The fact that the people rejecting a concern over system-level imbalance are doing so because they believe the group can and should behave in a way that causes table-level balance should make it obvious that balance is, in fact, important.

Balance makes the game easier for both players and DMs because it means you don't have to spend your time worrying about whether your character is going to be effective (as a player) or about whether a challenge is going to be appropriate (as a DM). Which frees you to spend more time on designing an interesting character or creating interesting adventures. It is, ironically, the people who insist that the quality of the mechanical portions of the system is unimportant whose position is most actively detrimental to engaging in roleplaying.

By way of analogy, imagine that you are purchasing a car. One model works out of the box in exactly the way you'd expect. Another model works, but only if you do some manual tuning and avoid pressing any of the buttons because some of them make it explode. Why on earth would you buy the second car if your goal is to get to work on time?

[gkathellar]

It's exactly as much of an issue as you think it is - which is to say, it is an issue for many people but not all.

I would suggest, however, that the imbalance discussion frequently misses a key point by focusing on intra-party power scales. The larger problem is for GMs. A game like 3.5 can be more precisely characterized as having "low predictability," in that what characters can accomplish and how good they are at it (i.e. their numbers) are widely variable within a given level band. This makes it difficult for a GM, especially a relatively inexperienced one, to prepare level-appropriate challenges, because levels barely mean anything. It also makes a variety of published suggestions for level-appropriate challenges (monster books, published adventures) much less reliable than they bill themselves as. That problem is further aggravated by a lack of regularity in the numbers associated with challenges themselves.

3.5 has other problems that are less subjective. Excruciatingly slow combat resolution. Actually-broken rules. A focus on legalistic rules interpretation in combination with a lack of editing diligence when it comes to those rules. Genre pigeonholing. Even some of the things you've highlighted as positives (and I think you're right to name them as such) have their garbage linings: people love the character-creation minigame, but it's also overcomplicated to the point that it actually dissuades people from play. System mastery lets you achieve wildly different power levels, but without extensive system mastery it's difficult to achieve what you want.

From a game design standpoint, I think 3.5 is awful. You couldn't create something like this on purpose (in part because of the sheer volume of material produced for the game, to be clear). And yet, like a Jackson Pollock painting, there is something beautiful that emerges from the disorganized mess. People love it. Hell, I love it, even if I find it nearly unplayable.

[Garwain]

Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

For me you are answering your own question. The balance issue lies not between groups, but between players in the same group. Sure, if you are all veterans, then play high level OP. If you are all new, then play with some pregen characters. 3.5 appears unbalanced because I played a cleric with some Complete Divine customizatin in a group where the fighter domesticated a wolf out of role playing aspects and the ranger decided to dualwield arrows for the cool factor. Needless to say, by lvl 3 I was outshining the group without blinking because I was tank, dps and support. We had fun roleplaying, but when the dice were thrown..
In that regard, 5e is more difficult to break.

[PhoenixPhyre]

As a outsider (I've only played one game of PF), my big issue is with accidental imbalance. When two newbies can pick up the game and choose "what looks good" and end up unable to play with each other meaningfully totally by accident. CF. Bear Bearington vs the Fighter with Toughness. Even in my one game (which got to level 6 or so) I was seeing that--there was a combat where myself (an oracle support build) and a witch trivialized one combat. The big boss (a major caster) didn't get anything off because a combination of debuffs sickened him until we caught up, at which point I threw silence on a melee dps and he died.

The other issue I had with that game was that the "stunning variety/tons of content" was really misleading. 99% of it was absolute crap wrapped up in pretty packages. Things where you read the fluff and it's like "THIS IS POWER!" and then the mechanics were "+1 to something you'll never see". Or all the cool things gated behind many levels of useless feats. It felt like they were intentionally publishing trap options so they could laugh at the fools who actually took them. That means that in principle there are tons of builds, but most of them are worthless (or nearly so) and the rest are convoluted. That's strongly off-putting to someone trying to get into it, IMO.

[Crake]

The fact that the people rejecting a concern over system-level imbalance are doing so because they believe the group can and should behave in a way that causes table-level balance should make it obvious that balance is, in fact, important.

I'm not saying balance itself is important, I'm saying that the system's balance isn't so important.


Balance makes the game easier for both players and DMs because it means you don't have to spend your time worrying about whether your character is going to be effective (as a player) or about whether a challenge is going to be appropriate (as a DM). Which frees you to spend more time on designing an interesting character or creating interesting adventures. It is, ironically, the people who insist that the quality of the mechanical portions of the system is unimportant whose position is most actively detrimental to engaging in roleplaying.

Dangerously close to a stormwind fallacy there. In my experience, designing the interesting character and/or adventures comes first, followed by the mechanical molding to match that design. Now, granted I agree, a more balanced system would streamline the mechanical molding portion, but presumably you're spending all the time on the character and adventure design that you're going to anyway, so it wouldn't be correct to say you're spending more time on designing interesting characters/ideas, but more that you're spending less time realizing them in the mechanics of the system.


By way of analogy, imagine that you are purchasing a car. One model works out of the box in exactly the way you'd expect. Another model works, but only if you do some manual tuning and avoid pressing any of the buttons because some of them make it explode. Why on earth would you buy the second car if your goal is to get to work on time?

Because the second car can be tinkered with to turn it into a drag racing monstrosity, and maybe you want to get from a to b with pazzazz. A better analogy would be a pre-built PC vs a custom build PC though. If you don't know what you're doing with a custom build, you can screw it up, but if you know what you're doing you can make a really cheap workstation or an ultra monstrosity gaming PC, but building the PC gives you the flexibility to make the PC how you want, rather than just picking between the pre-built options.

[Cosi]

I'm not saying balance itself is important, I'm saying that the system's balance isn't so important.

That's a distinction without a difference. If balance is important, the system being balanced is advantageous, just as if having rules for playing Orcs is important, the system having rules for playing Orcs is advantageous.


presumably you're spending all the time on the character and adventure design that you're going to anyway,

This does not reflect the reality of finite resources.


Because the second car can be tinkered with to turn it into a drag racing monstrosity, and maybe you want to get from a to b with pazzazz.

So can the first one. In fact, modifying a well-designed, well-functioning system is easier than modifying a poorly designed one. As anyone who has ever tried to modify a poorly designed, poorly functioning system will tell you.

[MoiMagnus]

I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

Yes, it is an issue. But is it a big issue? Not that much.

The main problem of imbalance is that it break some gaming groups. Difference of "optimization skill" can lead very different power level, and while it is great for single player games, it can cause a lot of internal problems in multiplayer games. While with most 3.0/3.5/PF gaming group, you could have some fun with 5e (sure, less interesting, but not bad), I thing a lot of 5e gaming group would just break apart for incompatibility between players in a 3.0/3.5/PF game. (unless I'm highly overestimating the proportion of ill-fitted players in gaming groups).

To be fair, I personally don't have that much problem with things that are OP. That's the DM role to nerf things on-the-fly when they are really problematic (and I care more about RAI than RAW).
My main problem with 3.X is things that don't work. Since its been a while I didn't read the books, I don't remember them in details, but I just can't look at them without having my "game designer spirit" says "this thing doesn't work as intended, this feat/spell is supposed to be useful in this build but is useless in practice, this mechanism is a huge missed opportunity and could be improved, this rule is absurdly complex compared to what it does, ...".

[zlefin]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?

Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.

However, then there's us. The people playing 3.5 and pf1, who want more control, who want to be able to play from 0 to 100, and yet at the same time people complain that the system is unbalanced, while it's that imbalance that gives them the very variety that they so enjoy.

I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

yes, it is an issue. otherwise we wouldn't be debating it at all.

but you may also simply be wrong about the extent to which people are saying "it's a problem". people aren't saying it's an insurmountable problem, merely that it exists and does cause problems. it's more likely that they're just countering your points that understate the extent of the problem, rather than they themselves overstating it (though I'm sure some do that). Most people aren't making a mountain out of a molehill; they're just stating a molehill is in fact a molehill, while you say it's an anthill. (I'm not sure of the actual size of molehills compared to anthills, I assume molehills are larger)


the imbalance isn't the source of variety; it's the number of alternate options and complexity thereof that gives the variety. admittedly, it's hard to do variety and maintain balance, but it's still possible: witness the large number of newer 3.x materials that are pretty close to a tier 3, and offer plenty of room to develop interesting characters.

3.5 imbalance is definitely an issue; because it has numerous times on various tables caused problems that had to be addressed/fixed. it's preferable to have products that do not require such fixes.

[ezekielraiden]

Is it better to give up accessibility in order to maximize potential variety? Is it better to put consistency categorically before power?

There are no "correct" answers to these questions in an absolute, perfectly abstracted sense. But we don't live in an absolute, perfectly abstracted world, and we can make meaningful claims about what goals a system should reasonably aspire to.

I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that (1) doing the DM thing [read: doing it well] is not easy in any system; (2) there is a chronic shortage of DMs, for all systems ever; (3) all games require introduction for new players; (4) the only way any of the previous three statements can be addressed is by outreach, whether on the part of a game's creators (e.g. Paizo, WotC, Pelgrane, Evil Hat, whomever) or on the part of those who use it.

These (again, hopefully) agreeable facts can tell us a few things. One: a system which makes DMing easier and more effective with less work is a system that will address a couple of known, pervasive problems. Two: a system that provides a naturally smooth introduction can capture new fans more quickly, serving both the (unmentioned) practical benefit of getting more sales, and the aforementioned outreach stuff too.

This doesn't touch on any of the specific faults 3e possesses. Just that being forbiddingly complex, difficult to introduce, and (perhaps even more) difficult to run are bad qualities in practice. If they provide enough benefit to be worth the cost, fine. But I'm really not sure they do. This is not to say that any other specific system is definitely better, mind. Just that people are not simply bleating about balance for no reason; there are real, practical costs paid for 3.x's "variety uber alles" creed, and intensified by shoddy workmanship on the designers' parts.

[Gnaeus]

The real issue is less imbalance than lack of predictability. Which, admittedly, grows increasingly less important as our game dies and new players are less of an issue. For experienced players, the game imbalance just gives more options, like playing at different balance points (like an all T5 or all T1 table) or challenging themselves (for a forum goer, playing a weak class in an optimized game is not unlike playing a video game on hard mode. It can let you pull out more stops without feeling guilty.)

Imbalance is a problem when you can’t mechanically execute your concept (like if your Conan swordsman keeps getting casually beaten by higher tier players pets or summons, or the stuff you fight, just because you wrote fighter on your sheet instead of warblade) or when it rises to a level where the game has difficulty challenging the optimizers without steamrolling the casual players, so encounter design becomes increasingly difficult and finally chokes and dies.

The more experienced the overall group/GM, the less game balance is a problem. The more diverse the optimization levels of the players, the more balance is a problem.


I would suggest, however, that the imbalance discussion frequently misses a key point by focusing on intra-party power scales. The larger problem is for GMs. A game like 3.5 can be more precisely characterized as having "low predictability," in that what characters can accomplish and how good they are at it (i.e. their numbers) are widely variable within a given level band. This makes it difficult for a GM, especially a relatively inexperienced one, to prepare level-appropriate challenges, because levels barely mean anything. It also makes a variety of published suggestions for level-appropriate challenges (monster books, published adventures) much less reliable than they bill themselves as. That problem is further aggravated by a lack of regularity in the numbers associated with challenges themselves.

System mastery lets you achieve wildly different power levels, but without extensive system mastery it's difficult to achieve what you want

Well put.

[Crichton]

So, if classes aren't balanced even against themselves, how in the Nine Hells they could be balanced?

IMHO, the only "balance" which ever can be in the 3.X, is produced from cooperative work of DM and players



It really really comes down to this!


Your party could be 4 characters of all the same class and you can still have wildly imbalanced power and ability levels. That's just as true in previous and later editions of D&D as it is in 3.5. Yes, disparity exists between classes and other game features. Yes it takes some planning and cooperation to make it all run smoothly, but no, that's not really an issue.

[zlefin]

It really really comes down to this!


Your party could be 4 characters of all the same class and you can still have wildly imbalanced power and ability levels. That's just as true in previous and later editions of D&D as it is in 3.5. Yes, disparity exists between classes and other game features. Yes it takes some planning and cooperation to make it all run smoothly, but no, that's not really an issue.

i'm quite sure that in previous and later editions of DnD the degree of power level divergence within the same class differs than it does from 3.5; and it's highly likely that in some of those cases the degree of divergence is lesser, and may not qualify for the definition "wildly imbalanced"

also, you seem to be using a bad definition of "issue" if it takes some planning and coop to run smoothly, then it's an issue, not a MAJOR issue, only a minor issue, but still quite clearly an issue.

[Crichton]

i'm quite sure that in previous and later editions of DnD the degree of power level divergence within the same class differs than it does from 3.5; and it's highly likely that in some of those cases the degree of divergence is lesser, and may not qualify for the definition "wildly imbalanced"

also, you seem to be using a bad definition of "issue" if it takes some planning and coop to run smoothly, then it's an issue, not a MAJOR issue, only a minor issue, but still quite clearly an issue.



Taking planning and cooperation to run smoothly isn't an issue, it's one of the primary features of the game. This is a rules-heavy multiplayer tabletop rpg that requires a serious time commitment from oneself and several other friends who have to sit down and play the game together. The whole game is about planning and cooperation, between the players as a party and between the dm and all of them. That's what the game is.

[ezekielraiden]

Taking planning and cooperation to run smoothly isn't an issue, it's one of the primary features of the game. This is a rules-heavy multiplayer tabletop rpg that requires a serious time commitment from oneself and several other friends who have to sit down and play the game together. The whole game is about planning and cooperation, between the players as a party and between the dm and all of them. That's what the game is.

If that is what the game is, why does it go out of its way to make that harder to do? Both in presentation (like I said, outright lying to the players about the equality of options, or as a different thing, totally misleading DMs with encounter difficulty ratings) and in practice. I've been told on this very forum, in just the last week or so, that the highest and most perfect form of teamwork is to make yourself absolutely self-sufficient. No talking, no planning, no cooperation, and yet that is playing the game optimally. Worse, I generally agree.

If planning and coordination are the game, it would seem that the agreed-upon winning move is not to play!

[EldritchWeaver]

Taking planning and cooperation to run smoothly isn't an issue, it's one of the primary features of the game. This is a rules-heavy multiplayer tabletop rpg that requires a serious time commitment from oneself and several other friends who have to sit down and play the game together. The whole game is about planning and cooperation, between the players as a party and between the dm and all of them. That's what the game is.

There is still the difference between a game which adds to the burden ("I can't play my summoner, because the fighter always wants buffs!") or a game, where showing up with a new character (assuming you don't overlap with an existing one) will not cause a problem with the existing characters by virtue of your presence.

[Quertus]

Yes, 3e is imbalanced.

Mostly, that's a feature, not a bug. It allows tables to play in many different balance ranges (or to ignore balance altogether). Balance to the table.

The only time this is an issue is when people are acting in ignorance, or the GM is trying to "solve" balance through house rules.

[zlefin]

Taking planning and cooperation to run smoothly isn't an issue, it's one of the primary features of the game. This is a rules-heavy multiplayer tabletop rpg that requires a serious time commitment from oneself and several other friends who have to sit down and play the game together. The whole game is about planning and cooperation, between the players as a party and between the dm and all of them. That's what the game is.

that doesn't work as a counterargument; because there's no need to increase the burden of work required. you can have planning and cooperation just fine without having to do additional work to address balance issues. there's no inherent incremental benefit to what you describe; especially seeing as it sometimes can and does cause problems because people don't go through that extra work. so you're simply wrong.

[MeimuHakurei]

Yes, 3e is imbalanced.

Mostly, that's a feature, not a bug. It allows tables to play in many different balance ranges (or to ignore balance altogether). Balance to the table.

The only time this is an issue is when people are acting in ignorance, or the GM is trying to "solve" balance through house rules.

It does, however, make it more difficult to establish a proper expectation for the campaign and it's not quite easy to meet the exact balance point the DM desires, either by failing to properly evaluate a character option (which exist in the PHB too) or by not giving the players a good point of reference.

Solving imbalance through house rules can work at some tables (including any scope of bans) while many unfortunately fail to accomplish what they're meant to do, sometimes even making the problem worse.

I do have to agree with the other posters on the presentation problem however, because 3.5 does proclaim (or at least imply) that the classes should be equal to one another if the same level. It doesn't help that WotC is grotesquely incompetent at playing their own game, still not having figured out how to play a half-decent Wizard even after half a century. And even in 5e they did not even remotely consider how much of a problem minionmancy is.

[Crichton]

If that is what the game is, why does it go out of its way to make that harder to do? Both in presentation (like I said, outright lying to the players about the equality of options, or as a different thing, totally misleading DMs with encounter difficulty ratings) and in practice.


You seem to be thinking the game designers are intentionally going out of their way to mislead, misinform and make things harder. You use words like 'outright lying' as if the game designers whole goal was to pull one over on you. That's a pretty outrageous claim, frankly. Yeah, they could have done a cleaner job of editing, and been more careful with their rules text, but honestly, across the hundreds of thousands of words of rules, and dozens upon dozens of classes, races, and other character options, asking them to also take into account how us rules optimizers would find ways years later to break the interactions between the hundreds of different rules is asking a bit much. You gotta realize that those of us who spend out time in this forum debating the tiniest details of rules interactions and finding new and interesting ways to squeeze every last tiny bit of power out of a character build are a tiny fraction of the player base, the vast majority of which crack open the books, sit down at a table with their friend, and play the game, having fun the whole while, instead of spending their time typing angry words online about a decade old game system that has the audacity to not perfectly balance every single interaction in its nearly a hundred rulebooks, not including setting specific ones. Sure, some classes are stinkers, and some sell themselves as more than they are, but most folks don't care. They just want to play a fun character with their friends.



I've been told on this very forum, in just the last week or so, that the highest and most perfect form of teamwork is to make yourself absolutely self-sufficient. No talking, no planning, no cooperation, and yet that is playing the game optimally. Worse, I generally agree.

If THAT'S your idea of a fun way to play a TTRPG with your friends, I guess go at it? I heartily disagree. What's the point of playing with friends if you're not going to work with them to succeed at your party's goals? Trying not to be a burden on your fellow party members sure, but flipping them the bird and telling them you don't need them, and worse, basically not cooperating at all? No thanks!


If planning and coordination are the game, it would seem that the agreed-upon winning move is not to play!

That's your prerogative.



There is still the difference between a game which adds to the burden ("I can't play my summoner, because the fighter always wants buffs!")

That's not the game adding to the burden. That's the players adding to the burden by not planning and cooperating. The game system has nothing to do with that.


that doesn't work as a counterargument; because there's no need to increase the burden of work required. you can have planning and cooperation just fine without having to do additional work to address balance issues. there's no inherent incremental benefit to what you describe; especially seeing as it sometimes can and does cause problems because people don't go through that extra work.

So you're saying you want the game designers to make every single class, race, and other character option to all be completely balanced so no character is ever more or less powerful than any other? Not only is that a completely unrealistic expectation, it wouldn't be any fun to play. Yes, some editions have wider swings in power levels than others. This edition probably has the widest of all. That's why I like it, frankly. But all editions of D&D have as a core founding principle that the dm and the players work together to make the game work. If you're having imbalance issues, that's not a game problem, it's a table problem.


so you're simply wrong.

Wow. Just wow.




Yes, 3e is imbalanced.

Mostly, that's a feature, not a bug. It allows tables to play in many different balance ranges (or to ignore balance altogether). Balance to the table.

The only time this is an issue is when people are acting in ignorance, or the GM is trying to "solve" balance through house rules.


I couldn't agree more, my good sir!

[MeimuHakurei]

You seem to be thinking the game designers are intentionally going out of their way to mislead, misinform and make things harder. You use words like 'outright lying' as if the game designers whole goal was to pull one over on you. That's a pretty outrageous claim, frankly. Yeah, they could have done a cleaner job of editing, and been more careful with their rules text, but honestly, across the hundreds of thousands of words of rules, and dozens upon dozens of classes, races, and other character options, asking them to also take into account how us rules optimizers would find ways years later to break the interactions between the hundreds of different rules is asking a bit much. You gotta realize that those of us who spend out time in this forum debating the tiniest details of rules interactions and finding new and interesting ways to squeeze every last tiny bit of power out of a character build are a tiny fraction of the player base, the vast majority of which crack open the books, sit down at a table with their friend, and play the game, having fun the whole while, instead of spending their time typing angry words online about a decade old game system that has the audacity to not perfectly balance every single interaction in its nearly a hundred rulebooks, not including setting specific ones. Sure, some classes are stinkers, and some sell themselves as more than they are, but most folks don't care. They just want to play a fun character with their friends.

Hanlon's Razor does indeed apply here.

[Endarire]

Crake: Maybe. Maybe your group has radically different pivot/balance points, like mixing totally new people with veterans of a decade+.

Ultimately, a notable goal of any game is for it to be enjoyed by all those involved. With potentially radically different expectations, these need reconciliation. Maybe that means having an epiphany about Warmages and blasting being good in practice due to having lots of casting stamina and a varied spell list, even if it's mostly many flavors of HP damage. Maybe it's realizing that higher tier characters generally require more effort to plan and play optimally in the moment than blaster casters. And so on.

[Quertus]

I couldn't agree more, my good sir!

:smallbiggrin:


It does, however, make it more difficult to establish a proper expectation for the campaign and it's not quite easy to meet the exact balance point the DM desires, either by failing to properly evaluate a character option (which exist in the PHB too)

Mistakes happen. You talk it out, and choose differently.


or by not giving the players a good point of reference.

Two words: sample characters. When that fails, see above.


Solving imbalance through house rules can work at some tables (including any scope of bans) while many unfortunately fail to accomplish what they're meant to do, sometimes even making the problem worse.

So, in the party where the Monk consistently outshines the Wizard, what does one ban? When I'm playing WH40K (where I'm horrible), how do you make the table balanced, when player > build > class, and I'll probably underperform even if you handed me Tzeentch or the god emperor himself?

Creating balance through a ban list can only* work if the most important element in the hierarchy - the players - are in sync. And, as my experience has taught me, if the "more than most important element", the character**, is not performing at expected levels, then the whole balance is off.

All I've ever seen ban lists*** do is demonstrate the GM's biases and weaknesses, while preventing perfectly balanced concepts.

* Or, I suppose, if the same players always play the same characters, and always play them the same way.
** Ie, the personality of the character. Quertus underperforms because of his personality, which I abbreviate the most relevant bits to "tactically inept"
*** Of more than a handful of items. Banning spiders, because someone had a phobia, for example, works perfectly fine.


I do have to agree with the other posters on the presentation problem however, because 3.5 does proclaim (or at least imply) that the classes should be equal to one another if the same level.

Yeah, that's my bad for not including that caveat. :smallredface: Although I think I did have an "ignorance" clause.


It doesn't help that WotC is grotesquely incompetent at playing their own game, still not having figured out how to play a half-decent Wizard even after half a century.

Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, clearly trained there. :smallwink:


And even in 5e they did not even remotely consider how much of a problem minionmancy is.

But... They clearly wanted "armies win" as a design goal, so "armies win" shouldn't have surprised them.

Seriously, if the 5e designers wanted to ensure that mooks remained a threat, and then were surprised when mooks were a threat, they should probably take a long, hard look at their lives.

[MeimuHakurei]

So, in the party where the Monk consistently outshines the Wizard, what does one ban? When I'm playing WH40K (where I'm horrible), how do you make the table balanced, when player > build > class, and I'll probably underperform even if you handed me Tzeentch or the god emperor himself?

Creating balance through a ban list can only* work if the most important element in the hierarchy - the players - are in sync. And, as my experience has taught me, if the "more than most important element", the character**, is not performing at expected levels, then the whole balance is off.

All I've ever seen ban lists*** do is demonstrate the GM's biases and weaknesses, while preventing perfectly balanced concepts.

* Or, I suppose, if the same players always play the same characters, and always play them the same way.
** Ie, the personality of the character. Quertus underperforms because of his personality, which I abbreviate the most relevant bits to "tactically inept"
*** Of more than a handful of items. Banning spiders, because someone had a phobia, for example, works perfectly fine.

Yes I did say that house rules can change table balance for better and for worse. And my only stance on bans in that post is that they definitely count as a form of house ruling. The main reason for bans other than your listed idea is to rule out concepts or elements that don't fit the setting/campaign (like evil characters in a campaign that deals with the players becoming exalted for instance) or ones that provide a lot of gameplay problems in adjudication and pacing (which is the main reason Leadership gets the axe).

[zlefin]

@drysdan don't bother to talk if you're just going to strawman my position instead of dealing with the actual point I actually made. all you did was strawman my position. sloppy arguing helps noone.

[ezekielraiden]

You seem to be thinking the game designers are intentionally going out of their way to mislead, misinform and make things harder. You use words like 'outright lying' as if the game designers whole goal was to pull one over on you. That's a pretty outrageous claim, frankly.

Given Monte Cook's "Ivory Tower Game Design (https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174425/http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142)" essay would seem to disagree with that claim being "outrageous." It was perfectly intentional--they just achieved a much, much worse version of it than they really intended. I believe the pithy phrase for this sort of thing is gone horribly right.


Yeah, they could have done a cleaner job of editing, and been more careful with their rules text, but honestly, across the hundreds of thousands of words of rules, and dozens upon dozens of classes, races, and other character options, asking them to also take into account how us rules optimizers would find ways years later to break the interactions between the hundreds of different rules is asking a bit much.

And if that was what I'm asking for, you would be right. I'm not. I'm asking for Monk and Fighter to be reasonably balanced with Druid and Cleric. I'm asking for two things which both cost exactly the same resource--Toughness and Natural Spell, or Toughness and Craft Wondrous Item if you want something not class-specific, each "one feat"--to provide roughly the same value. Not exactly the same, not even super similar, just a rough correspondence. Both of these are emphatically not the case, by intent. All of these options come from the very first book. Not dozens upon dozens of classes. Just eleven--not even one dozen. Not thousands of feats. Just...I believe 109, in the 3.5e PHB1 anyway.


You gotta realize that those of us who spend out time in this forum debating the tiniest details of rules interactions and finding new and interesting ways to squeeze every last tiny bit of power out of a character build are a tiny fraction of the player base, the vast majority of which crack open the books, sit down at a table with their friend, and play the game, having fun the whole while, instead of spending their time typing angry words online about a decade old game system that has the audacity to not perfectly balance every single interaction in its nearly a hundred rulebooks, not including setting specific ones. Sure, some classes are stinkers, and some sell themselves as more than they are, but most folks don't care. They just want to play a fun character with their friends.

I don't actually do that much of that, I'd like to note. Partially because 3.x/PF isn't my system of choice usually, and partially because I build characters by a different metric (power is always tertiary, with "neat mechanical idea, can I make it work?" and "neat story idea, can I make it work?" duelling for first vs. second). That aside, though, it is these people you mention who are my primary concern. The ones who do not use the incredible festooning variety of options. The ones who just want to sit down and have a good time.

Because the system does intentionally tell them things--like that a Monk and a Fighter are just as good as a Cleric and a Druid--that are simply false. And because, even when those things don't inherently lead to issues? People can extremely easily accidentally end up feeling cheated or left out, or feeling like they've done their friends wrong, purely because each of them just did what sounded cool. If Sally plays S'ah'lee, the 6th level Elf Monk who takes Toughness, Endurance, and Athletic because S'ah'lee makes it her personal mission to prove that elves aren't the wimps everyone says they are, and Bobby plays William Bear-Friend who takes Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning, and Natural Spell as his feats because William just loves bears so gosh darn much and wants to have as many and as strong of bears as he can get....well, it's possible they won't realize one of the two contributes a hell of a lot more than the other. Or an acquaintance of mine, who heard about this 'Incantatrix' thing, and thought it was neat to have a pro-female spellcasting class, and ended up single-handedly winning nearly every fight because of it, despite literally zero intent to seek great power AND not being a significant user of internet forums at the time.

It is, in fact, the people who "just want to have fun" who most NEED the books to be very clear about what they're offering. Perhaps I am being overly harsh, on the designers, but frankly, I don't really care. They have created a game that needlessly punishes people who make "poor" choices simply because they sound cool/good/fun, or randomly superpowers them, or anything in-between. People who play without system knowledge of 3.x are signing up for a crapshoot, and being told it's a fair game. That's wrong.


If THAT'S your idea of a fun way to play a TTRPG with your friends, I guess go at it? I heartily disagree. What's the point of playing with friends if you're not going to work with them to succeed at your party's goals? Trying not to be a burden on your fellow party members sure, but flipping them the bird and telling them you don't need them, and worse, basically not cooperating at all? No thanks!

Pardon, I was not clear. That is not--at all!--how I like to play TTRPGs. But it is the most effective way to play 3.5e. That is the thing I agreed with, in sadness. 3.5e is not a game that rewards, as I have phrased it, "positive" teamwork, where each player tries to key off what the other players can do. Instead, at best, it rewards "negative" teamwork--covering your friends' weaknesses. No interaction is required, at all; as noted, the best way to achieve success within the 3.5e rules is to make your own character as individually capable as it can be. Inter-character synergy is rarely worthwhile. In-combat healing, for instance, is almost categorically worse than just ending the fight or getting it meaningfully closer to ending.


That's your prerogative.

See above: it's not my prerogative, but it is the consensus in what discussions of teamwork I've seen regarding 3.x/PF rules. This makes me very, very sad.


That's not the game adding to the burden. That's the players adding to the burden by not planning and cooperating. The game system has nothing to do with that.

Both components would seem to be at fault, no? The players are bickering, to be sure, but the fact that the fighter sucks without caster help is a pretty serious contributor as well.


So you're saying you want the game designers to make every single class, race, and other character option to all be completely balanced so no character is ever more or less powerful than any other? Not only is that a completely unrealistic expectation, it wouldn't be any fun to play.

I can't speak for the person you were quoting, but no, that's not what I want, and yes, you're totally right that it's unrealistic. But of course, any time anyone asks for balance, it is always instantaneously interpreted as both:
(a) absolute diamond-perfect uniformity, which I agree would be both impossible and sucky if it were possible, and
(b) a call to completely goddamn destroy any trace of creativity or difference.

I don't want those things. I do want a more balanced game. I think that 3.x/PF has sacrificed far, far too much in order to allow a too-great gulf of power. I don't think that creating more balance requires destroying the game, paving over all the options until they're perfectly flat and smooth as glass. I think that overreactions like this are a huge part of why people get really angry in these threads.


Yes, some editions have wider swings in power levels than others. This edition probably has the widest of all. That's why I like it, frankly. But all editions of D&D have as a core founding principle that the dm and the players work together to make the game work. If you're having imbalance issues, that's not a game problem, it's a table problem.

So it is never possible--even in principle--for a game to provide options that lead to disagreements, frustration, potentially even group dissolution? If my above claims were too extreme, surely "nope, it's totally impossible for the game to be at fault, it's always the players playing in bad faith" must be as well?

Again, this is a big part of why I bring up inexperienced players and, especially, DMs. A game that absolutely, unequivocally REQUIRES careful and constant at-table balance in order to work is one that makes the DM job much, much more difficult than it already was. Surely you can agree that making the DM's job much harder is an undesirable state, and should only be allowed if the reward is unequivocally worthwhile?

[Jack_Simth]

Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

It can be an issue.

It often isn't: 3.5 folks generally play with the same group for a very long time, and get used to the optimization of the table they're at - which means they're all playing at the same level, which is the sweet spot, whether that level happens to be BMX Bandit or Angel Summoner; as long as they're all BMX Bandits, or all Angel Summoners, or all at approximately the same level between, it doesn't matter, that's the sweet spot.

There are two easily-seen scenarios where the imbalance in the system becomes a problem:
1) When groups get shuffled, and someone who's used to the expected power level of Table A is now at Table B, which can be very significantly different.
2) When new players get together, the relatively random choices will often lead to significant power disparity.
In either scenario, there's a power disparity at the table between the players, and that is the problem. The DM can send challenges that paste the low-op folks to challenge the high-op folks (in which case, the low-op folks wonder why they're there, because they're not doing much), or the DM can send challenges that are pasted by the high-op folks (in which case, the low-op folks wonder why they're there, because they don't get a chance to do much). That's the bad spot, as it means folks aren't having fun, and fun is the point.

An experienced DM who's had those problems before (and recognized them for what they are) will generally have some variant of a "session 0" where such things get ironed out, and characters are toned up or down as needed... but not all DM's are experienced, and not all experienced DMs have had those problems before, and not all DM's who've had those problems before will recognize the root cause as being different optimization levels.

If the system was more constrained (see 4th or 5th edition D&D), then there would be much less of a power spread in the game, and when there's not as much of a power spread in the game, the power level of the individual characters is more the same across multiple tables (and across less focused choices), which avoids the Angel Summoner / BMX Bandit problem with players new to the game or with shuffled groups.
However: If the system was much more constrained, then you couldn't play the struggling waif and the neigh-omnipotent master of magic in the same system, and the extreme flexibility is one of the draws of a gaming system to a lot of folks.

So... pick your poison, really.

[Bartmanhomer]

I think there are certain classes that are better than other classes. Take wizards, clerics and druids for example. They're better than all other classes in the game if you optimized them in the right way. So I think the game is imbalanced in a way but I don't care if D&D 3.5 is imbalanced. As long as you're having fun that all it matters. :smile:

[JNAProductions]

I think there are certain classes that are better than other classes. Take wizards, clerics and druids for example. They're better than all other classes in the game if you optimized them in the right way. So I think the game is imbalanced in a way but I don't care if D&D 3.5 is imbalanced. As long as you're having fun that all it matters. :smile:

The issue is, it can often impede fun.

Tippy's table, with StP Erudites competing with gods, is great for him and his friends.

Little Timmy's table, where a Monk is considered too strong (look at all their features!) and Wizards take Toughness and get good mileage from it, is also great.

Now what happens when Timmy's friend Bart decides to play the Bear Druid, who wildshapes into a bear while summoning bears with a bear animal companion? It's full of theme, but is going to VASTLY overshadow the other players, and if Timmy is the DM, he's probably going to struggle to challenge Bart, ESPECIALLY without just wiping the rest of the party.

Edit: To clarify, I think 3.5 is an AWFUL system-it lies to you, it requires excessive amount of knowledge to make a party that works well together without anyone overshadowing anyone else, and it completely lacks focus on what it wants to be. DESPITE THAT! I think it's fun. I certainly wouldn't want to pick up a system as bad AND complex as 3.5 without the army of work that's been done before me in it, but with that work done, it's fun to mess around in the system.

In that aspect, it's quite good. But, were I to have a system designed, I'd want a considerable amount more focus on what I wanted to achieve with it.

[Bartmanhomer]

The issue is, it can often impede fun.

Tippy's table, with StP Erudites competing with gods, is great for him and his friends.

Little Timmy's table, where a Monk is considered too strong (look at all their features!) and Wizards take Toughness and get good mileage from it, is also great.

Now what happens when Timmy's friend Bart decides to play the Bear Druid, who wildshapes into a bear while summoning bears with a bear animal companion? It's full of theme, but is going to VASTLY overshadow the other players, and if Timmy is the DM, he's probably going to struggle to challenge Bart, ESPECIALLY without just wiping the rest of the party.

Edit: To clarify, I think 3.5 is an AWFUL system-it lies to you, it requires excessive amount of knowledge to make a party that works well together without anyone overshadowing anyone else, and it completely lacks focus on what it wants to be. DESPITE THAT! I think it's fun. I certainly wouldn't want to pick up a system as bad AND complex as 3.5 without the army of work that's been done before me in it, but with that work done, it's fun to mess around in the system.

In that aspect, it's quite good. But, were I to have a system designed, I'd want a considerable amount more focus on what I wanted to achieve with it.
I do agree with you, it can ruin everyone fun when a PC or NPC play a tier 1 class. Also I don't think it's the creator fault for creating a broken or overpower class.

[JNAProductions]

I do agree with you, it can ruin everyone fun when a PC or NPC play a tier 1 class. Also I don't think it's the creator fault for creating a broken or overpower class.

Then who's fault is it? Literally, who else CAN you blame?

I do agree that the degree of imbalance was an accident, but the general idea (of trap options and the like) was fully intentional.

[Bartmanhomer]

Then who's fault is it? Literally, who else CAN you blame?

I do agree that the degree of imbalance was an accident, but the general idea (of trap options and the like) was fully intentional.

I'm not blaming anyone for it. Of course, the game bound to have problems and the imbalance is the reason for it due to the tier system. I'm pretty sure the creator must have play test all class to see if it balance but......Ok fine, I can't defend the creators for the there imbalanced screw-up. It's their fault. :mad:

[JNAProductions]

Bit of a whiplash there, don'tcha think? :P

I will 100% fault the game designers for INTENDING to include trap options. That's just mean, jerk behavior that doesn't belong in a good game.

I will something like 65% fault them for the massive degree of imbalance. It's so damn MASSIVE and continued for so long that they HAD to be cognizant of it at some point, but especially in the core books, they can be forgiven. They were treading new waters, there's bound to be mistakes.

[druid91]

The imbalance is an issue even if user-end results indicate that it isn't and not in the same way user-end results make it appear to be when sourcing the imbalances themselves. A balanced system is better for everyone and the system itself than an imbalanced system is for people who either never see the imbalance because they're either not aware or play around it and a system that allows for a million options because of said imbalance.

Especially because the former, a balanced system, does not preclude all the options you want to have. It just makes them harder to implement because they need better quality testing. Which is a net win for everyone.

Honestly, it's not. Assymetrical games are a thing. People really put too much focus on Balance.

No. A fighter and a wizard SHOULDN'T be balanced. They should simply have what they need to be their archetype.

[JNAProductions]

Honestly, it's not. Assymetrical games are a thing. People really put too much focus on Balance.

No. A fighter and a wizard SHOULDN'T be balanced. They should simply have what they need to be their archetype.

But asymmetrical in what way?

The Smallville RPG has wildly varying levels of power (Lois Lane and Clark Kent are not even CLOSE to the same power level) but everyone has a similar amount of NARRATIVE power, so the game works and is fun.

Likewise, Ars Magica has three tiers of characters-the grogs, who are extras; companions, who are more important but not wizard level; and the wizards themselves. But a key distinction there is that everyone has their own wizard, and just trade roles depending on what's going on, and more importantly, the game never makes pretenses about grogs being just as important and valuable as wizards.

That's probably my number one issue-the game does everything short of outright stating (and it might actually, at some point-I haven't read all 3.5 books) that a Wizard of level X is equal to a Fighter of level X, and it's just not true.

[Bartmanhomer]

Bit of whiplash there, don't think? :P

I will 100% fault the game designers for INTENDING to include trap options. That's just mean, jerk behaviour that doesn't belong in a good game.

I will something like 65% fault them for the massive degree of imbalance. It's so damn MASSIVE and continued for so long that they HAD to be cognizant of it at some point, but especially in the core books, they can be forgiven. They were treading new waters, there's bound to be mistaken.

I don't know anything about trap options, So I can't vouch for my opinion on it but I will say this, I think most of the tier 1 magic is very broken.

[ezekielraiden]

I'm not blaming anyone for it. Of course, the game bound to have problems and the imbalance is the reason for it due to the tier system. I'm pretty sure the creator must have play test all class to see if it balance but......Ok fine, I can't defend the creators for the there imbalanced screw-up. It's their fault. :mad:

According to every scrap of information I've ever been able to find, all of the PHB classes in 3e and 3.5e were not playtested after level 5. The designers assumed that, as long as the rules worked up to level 5, they would work up to level 20.

Now, consider that "E6" is a popular format that hard caps characters at 6th level. I.e., only one level above where the game was definitively playtested and ironed out (I believe, primarily, so that everyone gets access to a distinctive benefit, like full-BAB classes getting an extra attack and both Sorcerers and Wizards getting 3rd level spells). I don't think it's at all coincidental that this is the point people chose for this format.

So...no, you really shouldn't assume that the designers rigorously playtested the stuff they released. If they didn't do so for the PHB, why would they do so for the supplements, that get far less time and attention?

[Bartmanhomer]

According to every scrap of information I've ever been able to find, all of the PHB classes in 3e and 3.5e were not playtested after level 5. The designers assumed that, as long as the rules worked up to level 5, they would work up to level 20.

Now, consider that "E6" is a popular format that hard caps characters at the 6th level. I.e., only one level above where the game was definitively playtested and ironed out (I believe, primarily, so that everyone gets access to a distinctive benefit, like full-BAB classes getting an extra attack and both Sorcerers and Wizards getting 3rd level spells). I don't think it's at all coincidental that this is the point people chose for this format.

So...no, you really shouldn't assume that the designers rigorously playtested the stuff they released. If they didn't do so for the PHB, why would they do so for the supplements, that get far less time and attention?
I never play E6 but does E6 have the same balanced issue as the original 3.5.

[Crichton]

Snip

You make some very valid points, and after reading your linked Monte Cook article, I think you may be right that their probably-good intentions got away from them.

To clarify, it's not that I don't think the system can be at fault. 3.5 is so full of problems it's not even funny.

It's just that the last 3.5e rulebook was published more than a decade ago, so at this point, there's not much point arguing about how much or little the system is the root of our balance/imbalance issues. It's much as Jack_Simth said above. By this point, if we're still playing 3.5, it's because we like the other aspects of the system enough to overlook what flaws it has. Any who don't think the good outweighs the bad has moved on to some other system, or should.

As for the examples of problems at the table that have been brought up, most, if not all, of those could have been solved preemptively with some discussion and planning on the part of the players and dm(again, as Jack_Simth pointed out, Session 0 is really, really important), and if not preemptively, they can be addressed as they come up. That's how an inexperienced dm who isn't equipped to handle such things becomes an experienced dm who is. 3.5 is a messed up system that - by design, I now know from your Cook article - rewards system mastery pretty much to the point of requiring it. I don't think wanting to reward learning the ins and outs of the system is a problem, in principle, but it certainly went too far. But, it has been more than ten years since the last of the rules were published, so at this point, it is what it is, and it isn't changing, so....



More importantly than any of that, or any of the rest of this discussion, I'd like to thank you, ezekielraiden, for responding with detailed, specific, and most importantly of all, kind, thought out words. You're a fine example of a positive, contributing member of the forum, and I thank you.

[JNAProductions]

A good game is easy to learn, but hard to master.

3.5 succeeds at the latter.

[Darth Ultron]

I don't think 3.5 is imbalanced because it's just a game, and words like 'balance' don't apply to most games. While a couple games are just pure mechanical progressions forward until there is a winner, most games are NOT like that. Most games have a huge element of randomness and chance and chaos...and more so then other types of games D&D is in this category.

The ''balance'' idea crept into RPGs from somewhere, along with the idea that everything under the sun must be balanced. It sounds like a great idea, so it gets support and cheers: but what does it mean? And most of all, how do you even do it? How can you make a balanced RPG that everyone would agree is balanced?

Really, the only way to do it is the Very Basic Way. Think of a ''perfect'' balanced game: Checkers. Each player uses the exact same rules and has the exact same number of game pieces. And the game simply moves forwards in never ending 'turns' until one player wins. A player might have skill or luck or a distraction that effects the game play and outcome, but everything *about* the game is balanced. Of course, Checkers does not really have the 'depth' of an RPG, but it is perfectly balanced.

You can have a balanced RPP, following the same 'basic' idea: have five character types, each has 10 it points and can do 10 damage all following the exact same rules. Of course the mechanics are basic, but you can always role play on top of it.

D&D took a huge wrong turn in the name of balance starting with 3.0E. D&D before was very unbalanced, if you had to call it that...but it also did not matter. One character had a 20% to do X, another had a +10 to damage, and another could to Y, but at a huge cost. With the huge, endless, mess of rules it was hard...mostly impossible to mechanically compare most things. Also D&D before 3E had HUGE limitations on characters and actions, plus drawbacks, costs, negative effects and side effects. And a large amount of 'mini games' too. In older D&D, you often used all the dice all the time. And maybe most of all: the DM really controlled the rules of the game and decided how the game was played.

3E attempted to streamline this and make it all based on the D20 and 'higher is always better", and mostly got rid of just about all the drawbacks, costs, negative effects and side effects. And made the big statement of The Official Game Rules: the books told you the rules and told you have the game was to be played exactly....the DM only need do what the rules tell them to do. As always with such things, it does sound and feel like a good idea. All to ''balance" the game.

And not only did it make things worse....it created dozens of more problems and did not even come close to solving the problem it was made to fix and solve.

[ezekielraiden]

You make some very valid points, and after reading your linked Monte Cook article, I think you may be right that their probably-good intentions got away from them.

To clarify, it's not that I don't think the system can be at fault. 3.5 is so full of problems it's not even funny.

It's just that the last 3.5e rulebook was published more than a decade ago, so at this point, there's not much point arguing about how much or little the system is the root of our balance/imbalance issues. It's much as Jack_Simth said above. By this point, if we're still playing 3.5, it's because we like the other aspects of the system enough to overlook what flaws it has. Any who don't think the good outweighs the bad has moved on to some other system, or should.

As for the examples of problems at the table that have been brought up, most, if not all, of those could have been solved preemptively with some discussion and planning on the part of the players and dm(again, as Jack_Simth pointed out, Session 0 is really, really important), and if not preemptively, they can be addressed as they come up. That's how an inexperienced dm who isn't equipped to handle such things becomes an experienced dm who is. 3.5 is a messed up system that - by design, I now know from your Cook article - rewards system mastery pretty much to the point of requiring it. I don't think wanting to reward learning the ins and outs of the system is a problem, in principle, but it certainly went too far. But, it has been more than ten years since the last of the rules were published, so at this point, it is what it is, and it isn't changing, so....



More importantly than any of that, or any of the rest of this discussion, I'd like to thank you, ezekielraiden, for responding with detailed, specific, and most importantly of all, kind, thought out words. You're a fine example of a positive, contributing member of the forum, and I thank you.

You, also, make some solid points, and I can agree that getting excessively worked up about a game that's going on two decades old is a bit silly. (I am a silly man, so I still do it, I'm afraid.) One of the problems, for me, is that while the game's root remains, people who re-publish it--e.g. Pathfinder 1e, and now Porphyra in its wake--seem rather keen on keeping it, more or less, where it was. For every step forward they make, there's often another step, or two, backward, and that deeply frustrates me. Plus, the antipathy that actually balanced supplements get--like Tome of Battle and its spiritual successor Path of War--sometimes makes me despair that anyone ever will address these things in a 3e-type framework. It feels like too many people are convinced that the only way to get the game they want is for the game to make certain classes world-shattering and others barely at the level of IRL Olympic athletes.

And if I may be frank? I didn't feel that kind while posting those things, so I'm very glad you felt that way. I was worried I was much too aggressive, and am glad that (for once) I worried when I shouldn't, rather than the other way around.

[Crichton]

One of the problems, for me, is that while the game's root remains, people who re-publish it--e.g. Pathfinder 1e, and now Porphyra in its wake--seem rather keen on keeping it, more or less, where it was. For every step forward they make, there's often another step, or two, backward, and that deeply frustrates me.
I think those types of '3.75' continuation systems, at least at the point they started, felt like they were pointed into a corner, a bit. My (very limited) understanding is that 4e came out, the community raged with backlash over how different it felt/was, and Paizo stepped in, saying 'we've got your real continuation of 3.5 right here' and so, to court the market share they were targeting, they couldn't make any sweeping changes to how it all worked, especially if they wanted to stick to their advertised 'compatible with 3.5 materials' shtick.


It feels like too many people are convinced that the only way to get the game they want is for the game to make certain classes world-shattering and others barely at the level of IRL Olympic athletes.


Which is sad. I take the unpopular opinion that to attempt some semblance of balance, it's not the ceiling that should be lowered, but rather the floor should be elevated. I fully admit that that's at best a partial solution, but as primarily a player of caster types, I don't want people nerfing my toys, but I'm totally ok with martials getting nice things to. Personally, I'm quite fond of ToB. It's not perfect, but it is pretty nice.


And if I may be frank? I didn't feel that kind while posting those things, so I'm very glad you felt that way. I was worried I was much too aggressive, and am glad that (for once) I worried when I shouldn't, rather than the other way around.

You were specific, detailed, and courteous, rather than dismissive, condescending, and rude. You addressed what I said, rather than effectively telling me to shove off. I appreciate you.

[Bartmanhomer]

Pathfinder still has the same balanced issue as well. Just wanted to point that out.

[skunk3]

For me it is not an issue at all so long as all of the players in a group know what the expected power and optimization levels are to be for a given campaign. Sure, 3.5e is riddled with imbalance issues but so what? Personally I love the huge array of options available and that's why I exclusively play 3.5e. I hated 4th edition and haven't tried 5th yet, but I based upon what I've heard about it I think I'd prefer to stick with what I already know. Players know there is going to be a power disparity in games... as long as they aren't egotistical and can handle not being in the spotlight and/or can play characters that aren't uber optimized every single time (favoring flavor over mechanical effectiveness) it's fine. Also, the DM should know exactly what people are planning to do with their builds at all times so they don't get caught off guard by some feat chain or class abilities that make them much more effective all of a sudden. I fully support "rule zero" and think that a DM is well within his or her rights to say that this or that option is not available due to imbalance relative to the power level of the game they are running. I think the biggest problem I've encountered in 3.5e land is that the game has been around for so long now that people are developing a real mastery of it and memorizing countless classes, feats, and obscure abilities, ACFs, etc. They tend to create characters based upon mechanical effectiveness rather than story, flavor, roleplay, etc. (Of course they never admit this.)

[Crake]

The Smallville RPG has wildly varying levels of power (Lois Lane and Clark Kent are not even CLOSE to the same power level) but everyone has a similar amount of NARRATIVE power, so the game works and is fun.

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

[JNAProductions]

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

[Crake]

Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

[JNAProductions]

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

What of that is inherent to the system?

It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?

And what happens when the elves need someone to negotiate with the dwarves, and place that task in the party's care? Or the party is sent to deal with an orcish horde? Or literally anything where being an elf doesn't really matter?

[ezekielraiden]

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

Sure, those are things that the party can build into, with DM consent and support.

What tools does the Fighter class offer that provide comparable things? Now, what tools does the Wizard class offer that provide comparable things?

I hope you will agree that one of those sets is dramatically larger than the other.

[Quertus]

I'm asking for two things which both cost exactly the same resource--Toughness and Natural Spell, or Toughness and Craft Wondrous Item if you want something not class-specific, each "one feat"--to provide roughly the same value.

That is impossible. Toughness adds 3 HP, whereas Craft Wondrous Item (or any of the Craft feats) reduces XP/level. :smalltongue:

[Snowbluff]

No. (see sig)

[radthemad4]

If you've had a steady group for a while, you've probably already worked out whatever balance level you like to play at. The imbalance makes it hard any time you play with people you haven't played with before.

"DMM Persist with nightsticks is totes cool with us"
"Spirit Lion Totem is cheese and you are a terrible person!"
"Spirit Lion Totem is fine, but don't combine it with damage multipliers"
"Damage multipliers are fine, but don't combine them with Spirit Lion Totem"
"Planar binding efreetis for wishes is fine, go nuts"
"Multiclassing is cheese!"
"ToB is cheese!"
"A druid? Yeah sure go ahead. Consider going for Planar Shepherd so you can get 10 rounds per round."
"3.5 Monk is OP!"

It's tiring to try to find out what's okay and what's not, every single time you find a new group.

[Lans]

Given Monte Cook's "Ivory Tower Game Design (https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174425/http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142)" essay would seem to disagree with that claim being "outrageous." It was perfectly intentional--they just achieved a much, much worse version of it than they really intended. I believe the pithy phrase for this sort of thing is gone horribly right.



I think some of the balance was intentional, but some of it less so. I think Cook had an article about a varient with feats costing points and TWF was the one that costed the most.

[Hackulator]

I think there is one point in the "Ivory Tower Game Design" article from Monte Cook that is very important and people overlook: There are feats that are only good for very low levels and that is intentional. The thing is, contrary to what a lot of people here seem to think, many games do not progress to particularly high levels. In fact, many games are one shots. Toughness may seem like a terrible feat but if, as described in the aforementioned article, it gives you 100% additional HP for the life of your character it might be a functional choice. This is also one of the things that balances out the complaint people have about wizards vs fighters. If many or even most games never get past the first few levels (and I have read various articles and studies that suggest this is often the case) fighters are not particularly underpowered and in fact at most levels of optimization may be one of the better classes, at least in combat.

[Efrate]

As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

[Hackulator]

As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

I mean, I feel like this is the DMs fault in a lot of ways. Drop loot that will help your players and don't hit them with encounters they have noway to interact with. If you're going to run prepublished content, you should be reading it beforehand and be aware that these issues are going to come up and you may need to deal with them. The fact that burden on knowledge exists in in no way limited to D&D, I would say it's true in the majority of multiplayer games from TT to computer/video games.

[Efrate]

I am aware of that, but needing magic to deal with magic a problem if your party is not prepared, or all mundane. Also selling applicable loot for other stuff that seems neat doesnt help. My most recent group is my buddy's nephews, and age range is 11 to 14 so I don't expect nearly any system mastery, but magic christmas tree being an expected feature that is supposed to be used isn't like most other gaming. You turn resources to power but it is linear in most vigeo games etc, and not approaching challenges that require more lateral thinking. A million bad or neat but ineffective items is an option just not given, and who needs a plus one sword when I can get a bag of tricks by selling it!

Without pretty decent wblmancy it is just difficult to contribute meaningfully as a mundane as you go up in levels, merely because you do not have meaningful native abilities that let you.

School of hard knocks is getting them there but it is slow. The fact that the mundane magical imbalance needs a portion of limited resources to kind of close the gap is bad, and that the players arent made aware of that (though the dm is) is a design flaw imo.

Lead a horse to water as much as you want, but if it isn't thirsty its not drinking.

[Darth Ultron]

It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?


It's one of the DMs functions: to run and control the game. Somehow this got lost in 3X with the idea that DMs should just sit in the corner and follow the rulebook.


As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

Sure this happens to new players, but really only new players. Once some one has played the game for a short time they will ''get'' how it works. And it's never too late to learn.



You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

Well, this would be all on the player here. They did not want to spend their loot money on something pratical and needed. So what did they buy? Or did they just make a money pile?

How is this any different then a player of a spellcaster picking the ''wrong" spells?



This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

I don't think it hurts mundanes ''more".

And a huge part of this problem is the 3X mechanical rut: if it does not say X in clear mechanical detail on the character sheet, then the player won't even try and do any game action.


I mean, I feel like this is the DMs fault in a lot of ways. Drop loot that will help your players and don't hit them with encounters they have noway to interact with. If you're going to run prepublished content, you should be reading it beforehand and be aware that these issues are going to come up and you may need to deal with them.

Very true. Again this is yet another job for the DM.

For example: the DM watches two players just sit there and do nothing because their characters have no magic ranged attacks. So....in the next loot pile are two magic ranged attack items: ta da!

Also, even more so for new players, their is a lot to be said for the slow progression of levels upward. As the characters level up, they will slowly encounter more powerful things. It won't just be ''everything has 10 DR/magic", it will be one foe has 2DR/magic. Or the goblin has a single fiendish raven or there is a single ghost wolf.


My most recent group is my buddy's nephews, and age range is 11 to 14 so I don't expect nearly any system mastery,

I run games for a lot of kids, and for a kid game I run it with ''Kid Gloves". You know, make the game easy and simple because: Kids. Is running the game on ''novice" or ''beginner", not ''ultra hard".

[Quertus]

A good game is easy to learn, but hard to master.

3.5 succeeds at the latter.

Given that I've taught multiple 7-year-olds to play with mechanical if not tactical competence, I'd say that it succeeds at the former, too.


An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?


Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

Once upon a time, there was a 7th level party, into which a first level Armus was added. They adventured a bit, and were each returned to their respective homeworlds. Later, weird plot stuff, and the survivors (plus maybe some new people) were all abducted (again!) from their various worlds. Armus immediately collected a gold coin from each, and a soil sample from each of their boots. Whenever a new character joined the party under similar circumstances, Armus always greeted then with his (completely unexplained) behavior of trading them a GP, and collecting dirt from their boots.

Much later in the campaign, Armus "hired" a Wizard to turn the various dirt & gold samples, plus other components he had collected in his journeys (sand from a moving isle, for example), into a custom 12-sided not-so-cubic Cubic Gate, keyed to the various Prime Material worlds that his companions hailed from.

Through absolutely no power of his own, Armus made himself the narrative Lord of the End Scene, allowing everyone to return home.

But that's not all.

When meeting with some important (and beautiful) NPC, the party were falling all over themselves to declare choice spots next to her when sitting down for dinner at a long table. People could see the look on my face as I watched in silence, knew that I was up to something.

Once everyone else was seated, Armus strode to the other end of the table, sat down, and declared, "good, I'm glad that everyone knows their place". He began negotiations in a "quiet, children, the adults are talking" tone.

Mind you, he let others have their conversations / suck up to the NPC, but he set the tone of the engagement, and made sure that the parts that were important him were handled to his liking. Again, through no power of his own.

One last story.

So, still following the "all new characters start at level 1" rule, two new characters joined when even Armus was level 14+ (and I had stopped playing him for a bit, because he felt "too powerful" compared to the rest of the (higher-level) party). They were a pair of Wizards. Our party Wizard had a prized possession: a Staff of the Magi. That would help the noobs be more on par with the party. But how to get her to part with it?

Armus turned to the party Gish, held out his hand, and said, "give me your staff". The Gish, who understood that Armus was both the party's leader and a tactical genius, let alone other reasons, complied.

Then Armus turned to the party Mage, held out his other hand, and requested here staff. The whole table watching, she grudgingly complied.

Armus then handed the staves to the 1st level characters.

When she began to protest, Armus pulled out his secret weapon: backstory. Armus had paid attention when others were talking about themselves. See, she was the daughter of a powerful Wizard who, while he was still a lowly apprentice, his master had gone to war, and had handed him his Staff of the Magi to allow his apprentice, her father, to contribute. Her father was likely alive today because of this. Armus reminded the party Wizard of this fact, and the "temporary" transfer of items was complete.

-----

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.

What can we take away from this?

[Crake]

Given that I've taught multiple 7-year-olds to play with mechanical if not tactical competence, I'd say that it succeeds at the former, too.





This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

Once upon a time, there was a 7th level party, into which a first level Armus was added. They adventured a bit, and were each returned to their respective homeworlds. Later, weird plot stuff, and the survivors (plus maybe some new people) were all abducted (again!) from their various worlds. Armus immediately collected a gold coin from each, and a soil sample from each of their boots. Whenever a new character joined the party under similar circumstances, Armus always greeted then with his (completely unexplained) behavior of trading them a GP, and collecting dirt from their boots.

Much later in the campaign, Armus "hired" a Wizard to turn the various dirt & gold samples, plus other components he had collected in his journeys (sand from a moving isle, for example), into a custom 12-sided not-so-cubic Cubic Gate, keyed to the various Prime Material worlds that his companions hailed from.

Through absolutely no power of his own, Armus made himself the narrative Lord of the End Scene, allowing everyone to return home.

But that's not all.

When meeting with some important (and beautiful) NPC, the party were falling all over themselves to declare choice spots next to her when sitting down for dinner at a long table. People could see the look on my face as I watched in silence, knew that I was up to something.

Once everyone else was seated, Armus strode to the other end of the table, sat down, and declared, "good, I'm glad that everyone knows their place". He began negotiations in a "quiet, children, the adults are talking" tone.

Mind you, he let others have their conversations / suck up to the NPC, but he set the tone of the engagement, and made sure that the parts that were important him were handled to his liking. Again, through no power of his own.

One last story.

So, still following the "all new characters start at level 1" rule, two new characters joined when even Armus was level 14+ (and I had stopped playing him for a bit, because he felt "too powerful" compared to the rest of the (higher-level) party). They were a pair of Wizards. Our party Wizard had a prized possession: a Staff of the Magi. That would help the noobs be more on par with the party. But how to get her to part with it?

Armus turned to the party Gish, held out his hand, and said, "give me your staff". The Gish, who understood that Armus was both the party's leader and a tactical genius, let alone other reasons, complied.

Then Armus turned to the party Mage, held out his other hand, and requested here staff. The whole table watching, she grudgingly complied.

Armus then handed the staves to the 1st level characters.

When she began to protest, Armus pulled out his secret weapon: backstory. Armus had paid attention when others were talking about themselves. See, she was the daughter of a powerful Wizard who, while he was still a lowly apprentice, his master had gone to war, and had handed him his Staff of the Magi to allow his apprentice, her father, to contribute. Her father was likely alive today because of this. Armus reminded the party Wizard of this fact, and the "temporary" transfer of items was complete.

-----

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.

What can we take away from this?

I think this anecdote and this quote from DU:


And a huge part of this problem is the 3X mechanical rut: if it does not say X in clear mechanical detail on the character sheet, then the player won't even try and do any game action.

Are actually polar related. This, combined with the recent "Roleplay vs rollplay" thread, where people insisted on letting the dice resolve things rather than good old fashioned roleplay leads me to believe that people give far too much control over the game to their dice and mechanics than should be, and people seem to blame the system for it.

I've honestly noticed it to a degree in my own games as I DM. My players will rarely even think to go beyond the bounds of their character's mechanics (except to attempt the occasional cheesy request), and it can sometimes become quite depressing when you present your players with a roleplay opportunity, a time for them to build that narrative power, and they just kinda stare blankly and then twiddle their thumbs as they look to someone else to do it, until eventually they just kinda meander about toward a resolution. Part of this I think could be my fault, I've strayed away from making notable and recurring NPCs, but that's all for a different thread I think.

Anyway, point is, nothing in any system will give players narrative power, because the narrative doesn't happen through mechanics. Diplomacy for example, people often take way too far. Diplomacy lets you influence people's attitudes, you can make people more agreeable, but, for example, if you want to get the king to agree to commit his kingdom's armies to a cause, you still need to actually convince him, and the narrative power that comes with that is entirely mechanics independant.

[Darth Ultron]

This, combined with the recent "Roleplay vs rollplay" thread, where people insisted on letting the dice resolve things rather than good old fashioned roleplay leads me to believe that people give far too much control over the game to their dice and mechanics than should be, and people seem to blame the system for it.

I've honestly noticed it to a degree in my own games as I DM. My players will rarely even think to go beyond the bounds of their character's mechanics (except to attempt the occasional cheesy request), and it can sometimes become quite depressing when you present your players with a roleplay opportunity, a time for them to build that narrative power, and they just kinda stare blankly and then twiddle their thumbs as they look to someone else to do it, until eventually they just kinda meander about toward a resolution. Part of this I think could be my fault, I've strayed away from making notable and recurring NPCs, but that's all for a different thread I think.

Anyway, point is, nothing in any system will give players narrative power, because the narrative doesn't happen through mechanics. Diplomacy for example, people often take way too far. Diplomacy lets you influence people's attitudes, you can make people more agreeable, but, for example, if you want to get the king to agree to commit his kingdom's armies to a cause, you still need to actually convince him, and the narrative power that comes with that is entirely mechanics independant.



I think the disconnect here is:

1.The rules are a structural support for the role play storytelling, and are only to be used sometimes, and almost only when a mechanical 'neutral' result is needed.

2.The Rules are the whole game and the whole game is rules: only the mechanics matter. Some players might do fluff role playing and it's ''fine'', but it's not really, ''really'' part of the game...it's just fluff.

Just take the simple 'locked door' encounter:

2.The players will each look on their sheet for a skill, power, spell or ability that can open a locked door. If the player finds something on their character sheet, they will use it. If the player has nothing useful on their character sheet, they will most often just sit back and wait to contribute to the game later...and complain the game is unbalanced.

1.The players are first and foremost role playing their characters as they encounter the locked door. They will glance at their character sheet, sure, and if they have a mechanical something they will use it. If the player has nothing useful on their character sheet, they will most often lean forward and think ''ok, how can my character in the game world open and get past this door."

And far too often players in that second type of game really, really, really get tunnel vision. Like ''well we don't have a Wand of Knock, so there is absolutely no other way to possibly open a locked door..

To take a recent combat example from my game. So the solo mundane character is attempting to get into the goblin tower, they climb up to the high balcony where three goblins are standing. They hide from the goblins, but now have to decide ''what to do".

Tony Type Two: Looking over his character sheet and the core rules he could not find anything to do...so he simply had his character jump onto the balcony and fight the three goblins. His character did not make it....

Olivia Type One: She thought about it for bit and came up with a plan (she did NOT ask ''if'' it would work as that is a huge no-no in my game). Her character secured a rope to the tower, and then swung down to the balcony and attempted to hit all three goblins. So it was a quick couple of rolls for skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, bull rushes and such. The end result was her character knocked all three goblins off the balcony and killed them.

You can see the huge difference.

[Hackulator]

Olivia Type One: She thought about it for bit and came up with a plan (she did NOT ask ''if'' it would work as that is a huge no-no in my game). Her character secured a rope to the tower, and then swung down to the balcony and attempted to hit all three goblins. So it was a quick couple of rolls for skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, bull rushes and such. The end result was her character knocked all three goblins off the balcony and killed them.

You can see the huge difference.
That's fine but you have to make it SUPER clear to players that stuff like that is permitted, as by the rules it's not, and blaming people for not trying to do things outside the rules if they didn't know breaking the rules was an option is unfair.

Please note, I'm not saying you haven't made it clear to your players as I have no idea, just than in general it should be made explicitly clear to people if actions outside the rules/mechanics can work.

[Cosi]

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.


It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?

It shouldn't be. In practice it is, for a variety of reasons some of which are good and some of which are not, but there's no reason to allow characters who are notionally balanced (because they are the same level) to be practically imbalanced. There are good reasons to support a variety of power levels, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument for doing that via any mechanism other than character level. That's what character level is for, and doing it with character level allows all kinds of incredibly useful abstractions like CR. It's like the people defending different classes having different XP tables or THAC0. Yes, you can do that, and yes you can have fun with a game that does that, but it's still stupid.


If you've had a steady group for a while, you've probably already worked out whatever balance level you like to play at. The imbalance makes it hard any time you play with people you haven't played with before.

This is an important point. One major advantage of having a unified ruleset is portability. If we're just using D&D 3e rules (or D&D 4e rules, or Exalted 2e rules, or Shadowrun 5e rules), I can come up with a character concept and be confident I can play that in whatever game I happen to join. If there are a bunch of conversations about balance, and allowable content, and expected party dynamics, and campaign style and so on that we're expected to have, it becomes harder and harder to get a game up and running. Even if you're satisfied with the results of DMs fudging the rules til you don't notice design problems, asking them to do that in the first place creates high barriers to entry.

[Hackulator]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.



It shouldn't be. In practice it is, for a variety of reasons some of which are good and some of which are not, but there's no reason to allow characters who are notionally balanced (because they are the same level) to be practically imbalanced. There are good reasons to support a variety of power levels, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument for doing that via any mechanism other than character level. That's what character level is for, and doing it with character level allows all kinds of incredibly useful abstractions like CR. It's like the people defending different classes having different XP tables or THAC0. Yes, you can do that, and yes you can have fun with a game that does that, but it's still stupid.



This is an important point. One major advantage of having a unified ruleset is portability. If we're just using D&D 3e rules (or D&D 4e rules, or Exalted 2e rules, or Shadowrun 5e rules), I can come up with a character concept and be confident I can play that in whatever game I happen to join. If there are a bunch of conversations about balance, and allowable content, and expected party dynamics, and campaign style and so on that we're expected to have, it becomes harder and harder to get a game up and running. Even if you're satisfied with the results of DMs fudging the rules til you don't notice design problems, asking them to do that in the first place creates high barriers to entry.

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

I would also like to know what game you have played where you can make up a RAW character and never be worried that the DM might say for one reason or another you can't play it. In general, could you give me an example of a game you enjoy as much as D&D and which you think is well balanced?

[Cosi]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

If that were true, there would be exactly zero people who complain that teleport "breaks the game". Since there are more than zero people who do that, it is quite obvious that teleport provides narrative power. I happen to think the people who claim teleport breaks the game are wrong, but they're certainly identifying a real phenomenon. Also "the DM could just arbitrarily decide things" is a fully general argument against any player agency in the narrative at all, and therefore irrelevant to the relative narrative power of any two abilities.


In general, could you give me an example of a game you enjoy as much as D&D and which you think is well balanced?

And I would like you to stop strawmanning people's arguments.

In any case, I can give numerous examples of games I have enjoyed less than D&D that were worse balanced, or changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience. The idea that because most TTRPGs have flaws, people don't want good game design is the kind of Insane Troll Logic that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. Would it have been correct to claim that printing Tome of Magic was pointless because the game had gotten on fine thus far without a Binder? Does the fact that you can have a perfectly functional game where no one takes Mindsight or fights a Tsochar invalidate the existence of Lords of Madness? Of course not. We use the tools we have. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine, desire, or advocate for better tools.

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

[Mechalich]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

This is only true if the verisimilitude value of the narrative, and of the setting, asymptotically approaches zero. The simple reality is that in storytelling, as in life, good-old-fashioned raw power is capable of trumping 'narrative power' and seizing control of the narrative unless arbitrary limits are placed upon it. In the simplest case - if character A's action is 'I kill character B' and character A has the mechanical capacity to do this with 100% certainty, then character B's narrative power provides absolutely zero protection should character A be sufficiently determined.

Games built around 'narrative power' of any kind require an agreed-upon series of entirely arbitrary constraints in order to keep going. In comics - where these constraints are very much in place - this is called 'comic book logic.' Unfortunately, it can be difficult to manifest in a collaborative game, since not everyone wants to play by the same rules. There are games that even have a specific break point on this. Exalted had an elaborate 'social combat' system, one that was completely rendered irrelevant by anyone deciding 'f-it, I just stab him.'


Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

Well, MtG does operate on much tighter constraints than D&D does. At any given time there are only so many cards available for Standard play, they operate only in a small number of well-defined play formats, and their effects can be fairly tightly controlled. Compared to MtG, 3.PF D&D is more like the insanity that is the format where all cards ever printed are playable, which is indeed unbalanced as it gets and has infinite loops and all sorts of other madness all over the place. In the same vein 5e, for all its many faults, is if not better balanced than 3.5, at least easier to balance at a given table simply because it's so much smaller as a game. 'Core Only' and other approaches work similarly, by restricting the amount of material available the game becomes much easier to manage. This is, in some, ways, a paradox of RPG production: the economic imperative to sell more books that provide more options means that rules accrete over time and the game gradually destabilizes.

And D&D, unlike many other games, has a problem of sacred cows. There's so much accretion of material over time, over forty years now, that a portion of the hardcore book-buying customer base demands certain options that simply can't be removed. Many of 4e's problems had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with a poorly managed marketing campaign that relentlessly slaughtered sacred cows without providing any solid justification for why they were doing that. People hated the system before having any idea how it worked.

[Hackulator]

And I would like you to stop strawmanning people's arguments.

In any case, I can give numerous examples of games I have enjoyed less than D&D that were worse balanced, or changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience. The idea that because most TTRPGs have flaws, people don't want good game design is the kind of Insane Troll Logic that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. Would it have been correct to claim that printing Tome of Magic was pointless because the game had gotten on fine thus far without a Binder? Does the fact that you can have a perfectly functional game where no one takes Mindsight or fights a Tsochar invalidate the existence of Lords of Madness? Of course not. We use the tools we have. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine, desire, or advocate for better tools.

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

So the answer is no, you can't. Ok cool.

[Cosi]

Compared to MtG, 3.PF D&D is more like the insanity that is the format where all cards ever printed are playable, which is indeed unbalanced as it gets and has infinite loops and all sorts of other madness all over the place.

Those statements aren't really the same thing. An infinite loop in MTG isn't really a problem, at least not inherently. If you manage to do infinite damage, or draw infinite cards, or make infinite creatures, that just makes you win the game. It's not really any different from simply dealing twenty damage, or jumping through the hoops for a card like Coalition Victory (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=coalition+victory), or even activating the ultimate ability of most planeswalkers.

And while Vintage is pretty unbalanced, something like Modern isn't, and it has a very wide range of available cards, many of which produce competitive-viable infinite combos. Modern often has a larger list of viable decks than standard, and has roughly as many viable decks as 3e has classes. Maybe more if you were to constrain class power level to what produces a remotely balanced game. Hell, EDH (even Competitive EDH) gets official releases from WotC every year and you can use, as a rough approximating, 99.99% of printed cards in that format.


'Core Only' and other approaches work similarly, by restricting the amount of material available the game becomes much easier to manage.

Having a balanced game works similarly, by reducing the amount of thought you have to give to each element. Consider something like spells. With a few well-known exceptions, most spells at a given level are of roughly the same power. You don't need to shrink the game to have 3rd level spells be balanced, you just need to make the commitment as a designer to having "is a 3rd level spell" mean something.

There is almost nothing in D&D that is broken in a way that even a minimal destructive QA process focused on individual elements wouldn't detect. The things that are broken are not subtle cases where an option that was fine initially broken when introduced to something released years later. They're incredibly obvious cases like "the set of things you can summon with planar binding overlaps with the set of things that can use planar binding". We know where the holes are. None of them are in places that are especially hard to find.


Many of 4e's problems had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with a poorly managed marketing campaign that relentlessly slaughtered sacred cows without providing any solid justification for why they were doing that.

The problem with recklessly slaughtering sacred cows wasn't the marketing campaign (though that was bad), it was that they slaughtered a bunch of sacred cows for no good reason and without any coherent plan for how that would produce a better game. I don't think people were unwilling to consider a game where their were Tieflings instead of Gnomes, but I do think that 4e never made the case on any level for why removing Gnomes was a good idea. They didn't make it in their marketing campaign, but they also didn't make it mechanically, or in their setting material, or anywhere else you might convince people that Tieflings were more deserving of PHB race status than Gnomes. People were willing to live with the removal of AD&D sacred cows like variable XP tables or THAC0. People will forgive an enormous amount of cow-butchery if you produce a product that is good on its merits.


So the answer is no, you can't. Ok cool.

That's not remotely what I said. Most obviously, I said (I thought quite explicitly) that your framing is a strawman. You seem to have this notion that because I think something is better than the alternatives, any complaints about it are unreasonable, but that's absurd. That's not the standard we hold for anything. I don't think my computer is a perfect computer, but I still use it. I don't think my car is a perfect car, but I still use it. Your position isn't one that we take seriously anywhere else, and you have yet to explain why we should take it seriously for RPGs. You just go "but you use it at all" as if that proved anything anyone cared about.

But even beyond the fact that your demand is absurd, I gave pretty concrete examples that would have satisfied it if it was made in good faith. I pointed out that there are games I like less than D&D which are less balanced (as a concrete example: Exalted). That should be perfectly sufficient to rebut the notion that you can't make a game better while also improving its balance. I even noted that there are changes that I've personally made to D&D when I use it that I would consider better if introduced as a core part of the product (concrete example: replace Fighter with Warblade). Again, that's entirely sufficient to answer a good-faith version of your question.

So what exactly is the problem you have with those arguments? You clearly have one, because you read my post and aren't persuaded, but you haven't put in the effort to explain it to the rest of us. I'd like to hear what it is, but thus far you've done little to convince me you're making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

[Quertus]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere.


If that were true, there would be exactly zero people who complain that teleport "breaks the game". Since there are more than zero people who do that, it is quite obvious that teleport provides narrative power. I happen to think the people who claim teleport breaks the game are wrong, but they're certainly identifying a real phenomenon.

So, I also disagree that Teleport "breaks the game". What it does is invalidate certain railroads, much the same way that "killing plot-central NPC" or "selling the McGuffin" invalidates those railroads and "breaks the (already broken) game".

So, afaict, all that GMs complaining about Teleport "breaking the game" are doing is pointing out their own inadequacies.

Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.


In any case, I can give numerous examples of... changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience.

Define "improve the overall experience".


Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered".

So glad you went there. But let me go there anyway. :smalltongue: 4e is what happens when you prioritize "balance" over "cool" and "fun".

Some day, senility willing, I've really got to understand what its proponents like about it.


There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC.

That depends. If what people like about the game includes the imbalance / the range of power levels? Then, yes, it'll be worse.

If what people like includes the ability to balance for different table dynamics, or balance for different levels of player skill, then, yes, it'll be worse.

If what people like includes inherently unbalanced abilities (since you mentioned MtG, cards like Wheel of Fortune and the ironically-named Balance), then yes, it'll be worse.


The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

This, however, I will tentatively agree with.

[Crake]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.

The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter. And since the fighter and the wizard are presumably working together (they're a party right?), the wizard gaining teleport helps the party as a whole, not just the wizard, unless the wizard is intentionally trying to steal the spotlight and going off without the party to do everything himself.

[thelastorphan]

When it comes to spreading narrative power: that is the biggest reason for something like ritual casting and converting some iconic non combat spells into rituals. One of the few things I actually think 4e had a good idea about.

[Ignimortis]

3.5e is imbalanced, but that's only an issue if all the players and the DM are completely new to the system. As long as the group has someone who knows how 3.5 works, they can steer the group towards what the players need. The DM can also make an impact with a few choice houserules - banning Natural Spell and removing Druid companions does a lot to curb their power in low-to-mid-op campaigns, as does limiting Wizard spell access and making all clerics cloistered without access to DMM and Divine Power.

Imbalance is actually good for 3.5, though - it supports a lot of playstyles. You can go off the deep end into full-caster all-magical party stuff, or you can do a grim-n-gritty low-level campaign where the best full caster the PCs ever get is a Healer, and everyone else is Fighters and Rogues. It all works to some extent, as long as the DM knows how to build the game towards that. Sure, you could use a different system that also has support for different power levels, but those are quite rare and usually don't come with default style assumptions, while D&D has a lot of fantasy baggage to make use of. Other D&D editions don't do that, they are usually rather narrow in their scope of possible power levels.

[upho]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?Hyperbole aside, yes. But IME not necessarily because of players putting in different amounts optimization effort, and not in the way it typically seems to be imagined by most people who haven't experienced imbalance become a serious issue, especially if they therefore also can't see how it could be a very real problem (see more below). And by "serious issue", I mean when the 3X/PF rules system specifically makes a group's game clearly and decidedly less fun for one or more of the persons involved, despite none of them having had the slightest intention of making the game anything but more fun.


Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.

However, then there's us. The people playing 3.5 and pf1, who want more control, who want to be able to play from 0 to 100, and yet at the same time people complain that the system is unbalanced, while it's that imbalance that gives them the very variety that they so enjoy.This is all great. But why do you assume anyone who plays 3.5/PF1 would think otherwise, and apparently also believe that people have actually claimed otherwise?

It never ceases to baffle me that some people apparently still believe the fact that 3.5/PF1 allows for wildly different levels of power is the root cause of the system's balance issues. Despite the likely hundreds if not thousands of very well-written and fact-based posts clearly saying why this isn't true in this forum alone. But fine, I'll sound like an old broken record yet one more time:

The problem is NOT wildly different levels of (mechanical) power. It has never been the problem, and nobody who has given this a modicum of thought has ever claimed otherwise.

Now can we please agree to just stop assuming/claiming/pretending/straw-manning that wildly different levels of (mechanical) power is an issue? It's frankly getting really tiresome and does nothing but add confusion to these discussions and slow their constructive progression down to crawl. And if anyone reading this still doesn't get it, I recommend they simply ask themselves whether they think the power level of say a mid-op 1st level wizard is wildly different from that of a mid-op 20th level wizard. And if they do think so, they should also ask themselves whether they believe that power difference is part of the primary reason why "people complain that the system is unbalanced".


I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?I certainly don't mind if the system allows for optimization skill to cause a bit of power disparity between different PCs of the same class and level, or if there's typically a bit of power disparity between different classes/character types during certain or even most levels. And I agree that it's the group's and especially the GM's responsibility to adjust accordingly.

Unfortunately, "a bit of power disparity" hardly describes what 3.5/PF1 allows for and even encourages, intentionally or not. You wouldn't need to be much of a conspiracy theorist or cynic to claim 3.5/PF1 does nearly everything it can to make optimization skill and choice of class/character type have as much impact as possible, while it also does nearly everything it can to conceal this fact. And that is the root cause of 3.5/PF1's balance issues, as it runs directly counter to a goal of minimizing the risks of the system itself making a game less fun, and of giving the group/GM useful tools to identify and correct such issues should they occur.

Again, note that this has nothing to do with the game allowing for wildly different levels of power. And I certainly wouldn't want a 3.5/PF1 game which didn't allow for a similarly huge variety of character concepts to be reflected in its mechanics, or one which didn't grant PCs a similarly dramatic "zero to superhero" mechanical power progression.


No.:smallbiggrin: As succinct and consistent as ever, I see. Nice to see you popping by!

[Hackulator]

That's not remotely what I said. Most obviously, I said (I thought quite explicitly) that your framing is a strawman. You seem to have this notion that because I think something is better than the alternatives, any complaints about it are unreasonable, but that's absurd. That's not the standard we hold for anything. I don't think my computer is a perfect computer, but I still use it. I don't think my car is a perfect car, but I still use it. Your position isn't one that we take seriously anywhere else, and you have yet to explain why we should take it seriously for RPGs. You just go "but you use it at all" as if that proved anything anyone cared about.

But even beyond the fact that your demand is absurd, I gave pretty concrete examples that would have satisfied it if it was made in good faith. I pointed out that there are games I like less than D&D which are less balanced (as a concrete example: Exalted). That should be perfectly sufficient to rebut the notion that you can't make a game better while also improving its balance. I even noted that there are changes that I've personally made to D&D when I use it that I would consider better if introduced as a core part of the product (concrete example: replace Fighter with Warblade). Again, that's entirely sufficient to answer a good-faith version of your question.

So what exactly is the problem you have with those arguments? You clearly have one, because you read my post and aren't persuaded, but you haven't put in the effort to explain it to the rest of us. I'd like to hear what it is, but thus far you've done little to convince me you're making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

The point is that you complain about D&D to the extent that I have seen you in other posts claim that buying D&D books is tantamount to burning money and yet you cannot give a single example of a product of the same type you consider superior. If you complained about your computer not being perfect but it was by your own admission the best damn computer in the entire world then your complaints about it would seem ridiculous. If you cannot point to a single product of the same type as D&D which you consider superior out of the hundreds or thousands of roleplaying systems out there your complaints about D&D seem similarly ridiculous. I am not denying the system is imperfect, but since literally nothing in the entire universe is perfect a lack of perfection on its own is not really grounds for complaint.

[Darth Ultron]

That's fine but you have to make it SUPER clear to players that stuff like that is permitted, as by the rules it's not, and blaming people for not trying to do things outside the rules if they didn't know breaking the rules was an option is unfair.

Please note, I'm not saying you haven't made it clear to your players as I have no idea, just than in general it should be made explicitly clear to people if actions outside the rules/mechanics can work.

Right, this is very true...and really most players don't ''get it'' until they see it in game play.

But WHY are so many players like that? After all, the Rules are full of rules about ''doing things outside of the published rules". And yet the players that know the rules so well, just skip those parts, and can't even easily grasp the concept.

Take the skill Slight of Hand. Too many player think it's ONLY ''pick pockets'', and somehow don't read the part of the skill that says "Whenever you attempt an act of legerdemain or manual trickery"



So, afaict, all that GMs complaining about Teleport "breaking the game" are doing is pointing out their own inadequacies.

Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.


This is DM problem, not a game problem. It's not even a rule problem. The rules are clear that A)The DM can make anything they want in the game and B)the game world must scale up with the players.

Though this is a big part of where 3X drops the ball. After the rules say several times that games should/must use only the rules, they say the DM can do anything and the game must scale up with the players. And.....that's it. The rules don't elaborate or say anything else or give any examples.

I guess the 3X game writers assumed everyone playing the game would be a 2E D&D gamer and understand the two concepts so well that they did not need to be put out in plain text. It's a very odd omission.

[Lans]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.


Well one of those is an ability that can be done by any sort of creature and the other is a character that can do said ability :tongue:



Narrative power is not the only choice when it comes to balance. There is also screen time which high tier casters also have options for but i want to bring up because it doesn't get talked about much

[Hackulator]

Right, this is very true...and really most players don't ''get it'' until they see it in game play.

But WHY are so many players like that? After all, the Rules are full of rules about ''doing things outside of the published rules". And yet the players that know the rules so well, just skip those parts, and can't even easily grasp the concept.

Take the skill Slight of Hand. Too many player think it's ONLY ''pick pockets'', and somehow don't read the part of the skill that says "Whenever you attempt an act of legerdemain or manual trickery"


Things are designed with specifically defined capabilities. Anything outside those specific definitions is entirely up to the DM, which is implicit in the rules if not explicitly stated in the sections about rule 0. Therefore, without the DM telling you you can do those things, there's no reason to think you can. If you're with a new group, even if the DM tells you that you still really can't have any idea what the scale of things you are allowed to do is until you see it in action. Nobody wants to come up with what they think is a super cool idea only to be told "nope that will never work" or, in some cases even worse in the way you run (though please note I'm not saying I disagree with your decision to not tell people if something might work, only that it does have a downside like all things), for them to attempt something which never had any chance of working and waste their action/screw the party/die because they tried to step outside of the rules in a way you don't think was reasonable.

[Erloas]

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)

[Darth Ultron]

Things are designed with specifically defined capabilities. Anything outside those specific definitions is entirely up to the DM, which is implicit in the rules if not explicitly stated in the sections about rule 0. Therefore, without the DM telling you you can do those things, there's no reason to think you can. If you're with a new group, even if the DM tells you that you still really can't have any idea what the scale of things you are allowed to do is until you see it in action. Nobody wants to come up with what they think is a super cool idea only to be told "nope that will never work" or, in some cases even worse in the way you run (though please note I'm not saying I disagree with your decision to not tell people if something might work, only that it does have a downside like all things), for them to attempt something which never had any chance of working and waste their action/screw the party/die because they tried to step outside of the rules in a way you don't think was reasonable.

Your answer is a good example. You make "entirely up to the DM" sound like an odd thing when really the whole game world/ game play is entirely up to the DM.

It's an odd view:

Player: "I roll a d20 to hit the monster using THE rules and you DM HAVE to let it happen because THE rules say so."

Vs.

Player: "Well, if I even suggest anything not 'in the rules' the DM might say no, so I won't even try".

And, again, the rules do tell you you can attempt to do things the rules don't cover. Ability Checks: Sometimes a character tries to do something to which no specific skill really applies. In these cases, you make an ability check. An ability check is a roll of 1d20 plus the appropriate ability modifier.

Example: Got the gnome wants to distract a guard by telling some jokes. A quick look through the rules shows no rules for this action. This is where a charisma ability check would come in:

Easy way: the DM just has the player make a charisma ability check. Easy.

Bit more:The DM does an opposed wisdom check by the guard vs the charisma check...or maybe sets the DC = guards wisdom.

And sure, you might be in a game like this:

Player: "Hey, DM, my character will tell some jokes to distract the guard!"

DM: "No, absolutely not! Never Ever going to happen. Your character just sits in the corner and does nothing."

And...ok, if that happens...you might want to look for another DM.

[MeimuHakurei]

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)

You're forgetting that walking somewhere means you can encounter raiders, ravines, forest fires, tidal waves, mountain passes, giant tribes, avalanches and a number of other things that can impede your ability to reach point B, including being lethal to the party so they don't get there at all. Teleport just lets you immediately arrive there, with no chance of any of these things hindering you.

[upho]

This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

/Fun stories about Armus cut for brevity./

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.Yep, but assuming Armus wasn't an unusually well educated spellcaster (or maybe something rogue-ish), I have to object! Because if so, I suspect that meta-game knowledge that you, the player, happened to have was the primary source of his narrative power in many cases, or maybe even in most cases. For example, practically regardless of which class you happen to play, it's fairly easy for an experienced player to make their PC stand out as a tactical genius or master negotiator in a party of PC's played by less experienced people. Likewise, the probability that a 7th level non-caster has enough skill ranks in Spellcraft (and/or Know planes?) to have even just some rudimentary basic knowledge of how high level plane-shift magics work isn't exactly high, not to mention knowledge of any specific components which may be required/useful for such magics...


What can we take away from this?That player power - including such things as improvisational acting skills which would've impressed Sanford Meisner himself - can compensate for a PC's lack of mechanical power in many games?

That all the narrative power of a PC isn't (and shouldn't be) necessarily primarily dependent on the rules?

Unfortunately, I don't think this says anything about the balance problems when it comes to the narrative power derived from the mechanics in most games, but simply that such balance issues can be worsened or mitigated by other factors. I mean, if the mechanics provided by the rules had instead been the primary source of Armus' narrative power, I'd wager it would've been considerable less impressive, and the same would likely be true if Armus had happened to have a very different personality. Imagine how successful he would've been if had happened to have a personality, mindset and tactical ineptitude similar to say Quertus, your mechanically far more powerful wizard.

Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."

[Crake]

Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."

A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.

I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it. Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.

There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with. I mean, think about it. The PLAYER came up with those ideas, and the PLAYER has absolutely no ranks in spellcraft, the PLAYER has no idea how to construct a spell, or craft a magical item, but the idea that pieces could be useful is certainly an idea that anyone could come up with.

It would be like harvesting troll blood, thinking it could be useful for healing potions, you know trolls regenerate, and you know healing potions heal you, you can make the link and maybe you're right. After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".

[upho]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.
The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter.
Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.
This is DM problem, not a game problem. It's not even a rule problem.
Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)Guys, are you actually serious now? Because I can't actually remember more than a rare few of the tons of teleports used in actual games which I've run or played in that didn't have narrative power, and typically quite a lot of narrative power. The ability to go from A to B in 6 seconds rather than say two months or even just a few hours can often be a complete game-changer, and in turn also a complete "story-changer". And it's definitely not the same thing as your typical "fast travel" in computer games, unless perhaps if you only have players with remarkably little creativity or tactical and problem-solving skills. On top of that, it often provides a ton of additional alternative solutions to more complex problems which otherwise would've been too risky, resource intense or simply impossible.

Two very simple examples:

The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

And perhaps Erloas would care to explain how these examples are "Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work".


A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.And?

(Also keep in mind this was merely an example, and the opposite would serve just as well. Like say a player being told or feeling compelled to play his Int 26+ wizard star student of the "War Mage Academy" as a tactically inept coward in order to reduce his narrative power).


I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it. Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.But deciding the "how" IS narrative power, aside from the fact that all mechanical PC abilities increase the possibility to "direct the narrative", if often only in some very small or more general sense. Spells happen to be abilities which stand out in this regard. I mean, they can do things like involve beings from multiple planes in what the GM expected would be conflict confined to the material plane, in most cases without the need of any related GM fiat or special permissions whatsoever.


Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.Sure, but meta or not, the important point here is that all of these things could just as well or better be accomplished through the game mechanics, especially through the use of spells.


There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with. I mean, think about it. The PLAYER came up with those ideas, and the PLAYER has absolutely no ranks in spellcraft, the PLAYER has no idea how to construct a spell, or craft a magical item, but the idea that pieces could be useful is certainly an idea that anyone could come up with.

It would be like harvesting troll blood, thinking it could be useful for healing potions, you know trolls regenerate, and you know healing potions heal you, you can make the link and maybe you're right. After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".Are you saying that the player cannot possibly have played a high level wizard in some previous game, or never bothered to read up on some spells? And if dirt and gold coins would serve, why not the PCs themselves?

And perhaps more importantly, if the components actually weren't needed according to the rules of the spell(s) used, then the components also enabled said spell(s) purely because the GM allowed them to.

[Mechalich]

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming. Functionally, there are fantasy worlds without instantaneous travel methods, and there are fantasy worlds with them, and if you take the verisimilitude of your fantasy at all seriously then these two worlds have very different structures. An excellent example can be found in the Wheel of Time series, in which teleportation magic (Travelling) comes online in a mass way around book six and drastically changes how all important events play out subsequently. To the credit of the authors, Jordan and Sanderson managed to integrate this at least partially, and included huge armies teleporting from halfway across the planet, cannons firing through portals from caves completely without natural egress, and using the telportation magic as a direct weapon in the narrative.

But these sorts of problems are not game balance problems, they are issues of setting structure and verisimilitude. The game balance issue, in the context of D&D, is that one subset of classes gets teleportation, and others do not, which means that only those characters have the ability to alter the narrative in this way. However, if you take the setting issues seriously, then widespread teleportation becomes a requirement for adventuring and a party without access to teleportation is going to face huge barriers interacting with the world. This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.

Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty, but the absence of abilities can be much more pervasive. For instance, low-level spells have long overridden essentially all survival challenges in D&D rendering the entire category of 'man vs. nature' stories almost completely superfluous (Dark Sun, in attempting to restore such options, outright bans a huge suite of spells and effects), but only for certain classes. This sort of blatant narrative imbalance can be seen in the world of D&D novels. Novels about warriors, such as the various Drizzt works, often involve long, complex overland journeys with many encounters along the war. Novels about spellcasters, such as the various Elminster works, tend to ignore these and allow the major characters to teleport across multiple kingdoms in a single day. Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world, they occupy completely different narrative universes. Case in point: Salvatore once wrote about how Drizzt had a profound religious experience by touching a unicorn, a symbol of the goddess Meleikki he worships. Elminster, on regular occasions, talks directly to not one, but multiple, deities.

[martixy]

the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization

It's a feature, not a bug.

That is all.

But honestly, I have not found any other system that allows me to reasonably do the shenanigans I want to do, in as structured a way I want them done. It is legit the only system I feel I can express most of the zany and absurd character concepts I enjoy in.

[Cosi]

Define "improve the overall experience".

Well, in this particular context, I would probably say something like "reduce the power discrepancy between characters".


So glad you went there. But let me go there anyway. :smalltongue: 4e is what happens when you prioritize "balance" over "cool" and "fun".

There are, broadly, two theories of why 4e is bland and bad. Or at least two I've seen on this forum. One says "4e is bland and bad because if you make things balanced they become bland and bad". The other says "4e is bland and bad because the designers who made it weren't especially competent and designing good RPGs is hard". And we could go back and forth over exactly how balanced 4e is, and exactly what an apples-to-apples 3e-to-4e comparison is, but I think there's something much simpler we can do. We can look at skill challenges.

Skill Challenges were the big mechanical innovation of 4e. They aren't a revision of a 3e mechanic, they're a new thing added in 4e to cover a previously unfilled niche. And they suck. The core mechanic of skill challenges (counting party failures) discourages dynamic play and involving the whole party. Since those are the explicit goals of the system, it is one of the few mechanics that can be called an objective failure (not to mention all the ways it is a subjective failure like "being incredibly boring" and "creating tension between players and characters"). And despite revising it more often and more quickly than almost any other RPG mechanic (contenders being "D&D 3e polymorph rules", "Shadowrun hacking rules", and "GURPS unarmed combat rules"), they never fixed that.

I think that provides pretty convincing evidence that the problem with 4e wasn't that prioritizing game balance makes your game terrible, but that the people who made the game did a terrible job. The place where they were working unconstrained by comparison to previous editions is one of the worst designed and worst balanced parts of the game.


If what people like includes inherently unbalanced abilities (since you mentioned MtG, cards like Wheel of Fortune and the ironically-named Balance), then yes, it'll be worse.

Those abilities aren't inherently imbalanced. They're undercosted relative to the modern design paradigm, but symmetric wheels and asymmetric (ironically, in Balance's case) wraths are entirely balance-able effects.


The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter. And since the fighter and the wizard are presumably working together (they're a party right?), the wizard gaining teleport helps the party as a whole, not just the wizard, unless the wizard is intentionally trying to steal the spotlight and going off without the party to do everything himself.

Spotlight time is finite. Any problem the Wizard solves is a problem the Fighter doesn't solve. That's not "intentionally trying to steal the spotlight", that's a simple fact. The Fighter has no way of getting the spotlight. And the notion that the Wizard getting an ability increases the Fighter's narrative power is getting dangerously close to "because your character sucks, you get to tell the rest of the party what do to", which is an absolutely terrible paradigm.


If what people like includes the ability to balance for different table dynamics, or balance for different levels of player skill, then, yes, it'll be worse.

Imbalance is actually good for 3.5, though - it supports a lot of playstyles. You can go off the deep end into full-caster all-magical party stuff, or you can do a grim-n-gritty low-level campaign where the best full caster the PCs ever get is a Healer, and everyone else is Fighters and Rogues.

I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.


The point is that you complain about D&D to the extent that I have seen you in other posts claim that buying D&D books is tantamount to burning money

That's quite impressive, because I haven't said that. I've said that replacing rules you pay for with rules you make up is burning money, because making up rules is free. And that's true. But D&D books have lots of rules you don't have to throw out. I've never had any particular problem with the initiative rules, or the appraise rules, or 99% of the spells, or 99% of the monsters, or so on and so forth. Once again, you are conflating "this has problems" with "this is totally worthless".


If you complained about your computer not being perfect but it was by your own admission the best damn computer in the entire world then your complaints about it would seem ridiculous.

No they wouldn't. Consider the first computers, which were the size of entire rooms and had less power than my smartphone. They were top of the line, and they solved previously-insoluble problems. Was it ridiculous to say "this is too large" or "I'd like to have a graphical interface for this"? I would argue that it is obviously not, and that saying it is would be tantamount to arguing we should never attempt to make progress in anything. Even today there are properties I would like my computer to have which even the most expensive possible computers do not have. Using a computer that exists while still wanting those thing isn't ridiculous, its a realistic acknowledgement that there's a large range between "usable" and "perfect".


If you cannot point to a single product of the same type as D&D which you consider superior

Except I can. I can point to "D&D, but with Warblades instead of Fighters". That is a thing which exists, and I would consider it superior to D&D. So not only is your argument absurd, it's false. So pick a different argument.


Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything.

It adds the ability to say "we go to place X" with certainty and without being jerked around. If you think that's nothing, I think that reflects rather poorly on your DMing style.

[Morty]

A game that offered 3E's range of power levels and power sources on purpose, rather than as a result of ineptitude and a "quantity over quality" approach to releasing material, might be a truly fantastic one. We'll have to see if one ever appears, I guess.

[Erloas]

You're forgetting that walking somewhere means you can encounter raiders, ravines, forest fires, tidal waves, mountain passes, giant tribes, avalanches and a number of other things that can impede your ability to reach point B, including being lethal to the party so they don't get there at all. Teleport just lets you immediately arrive there, with no chance of any of these things hindering you.
No, that's exactly what I was saying. Teleport removes those options in the narrative but it doesn't add anything in return. The trip could add to the narrative or not, but if there is no trip there is no option to make it part of the narrative.


Not directly related but not directly quoting the other statement
"This story element is completely changed because of teleport" isn't really changed. If teleport is an option than your "time critical event" *has* to be very soon, if not it can be longer in the future, but the narrative didn't really change. "The sacrifice happens at midnight 200 miles away" versus "The sacrifice happens at midnight on the next full moon 60 miles away" are essentially the same narrative. The difference is that as a DM the option to make the trip part of the narrative versus the narrative being entirely at the destination has been removed. It hasn't really changed anything, just removed options.

[Hackulator]

Your answer is a good example. You make "entirely up to the DM" sound like an odd thing when really the whole game world/ game play is entirely up to the DM.

It's an odd view:

Player: "I roll a d20 to hit the monster using THE rules and you DM HAVE to let it happen because THE rules say so."

Vs.

Player: "Well, if I even suggest anything not 'in the rules' the DM might say no, so I won't even try".

And, again, the rules do tell you you can attempt to do things the rules don't cover. Ability Checks: Sometimes a character tries to do something to which no specific skill really applies. In these cases, you make an ability check. An ability check is a roll of 1d20 plus the appropriate ability modifier.

Example: Got the gnome wants to distract a guard by telling some jokes. A quick look through the rules shows no rules for this action. This is where a charisma ability check would come in:

Easy way: the DM just has the player make a charisma ability check. Easy.

Bit more:The DM does an opposed wisdom check by the guard vs the charisma check...or maybe sets the DC = guards wisdom.

And sure, you might be in a game like this:

Player: "Hey, DM, my character will tell some jokes to distract the guard!"

DM: "No, absolutely not! Never Ever going to happen. Your character just sits in the corner and does nothing."

And...ok, if that happens...you might want to look for another DM.

Clearly that would be perform: comedy. :smallcool:

Regardless, when something is being made up, it is entirely up to the DM. When the baseline rules are being used, the DM is choosing to do so but to say the way it works is entirely up to them would be inaccurate, so I stand by my statement.

If your DM regularly doesn't let you hit things with hit rolls, well, that's also a problem game.

As for your example, I more meant if you decided the idea with swinging at the goblins wouldn't work, but you didn't tell them (as you said you don't answer the question will this work) and so they swung around and didn't knock the goblins off and were then just hanging on a rope there having done nothing in full view of three angry goblins, never having had a chance to succeed in the first place. While I admit that in a single instance this might be quite funny, it could easily get annoying especially if it let to character death.

[Cosi]

No, that's exactly what I was saying. Teleport removes those options in the narrative but it doesn't add anything in return.

Yes it does. It adds the ability to go places that are far away quickly. Go read The Chronicles of Amber or Creatures of Light and Darkness and tell me that travel magic doesn't have narrative impact.


"This story element is completely changed because of teleport" isn't really changed.

I literally cannot comprehend how you could seriously claim that "having X" and "not having X" do not represent different things to a degree that would make going from one to the other a change. That's simply nonsensical. A story is defined by the things that happen in it. If different things happen, you have a different story. If teleport isn't narrative power, nothing is.


If teleport is an option than your "time critical event" *has* to be very soon,

No it doesn't. It could be at an unknown location, or somewhere fortified, or at multiple locations.


The difference is that as a DM the option to make the trip part of the narrative versus the narrative being entirely at the destination has been removed. It hasn't really changed anything, just removed options.

Yes, the difference is that the DM has an option. With teleport, the players have an option. Which means that having teleport increases the narrative power of the players.

[Quertus]

When it comes to spreading narrative power: that is the biggest reason for something like ritual casting and converting some iconic non combat spells into rituals. One of the few things I actually think 4e had a good idea about.

Why do people keep crediting 4e for this, when such rituals existed in 3e?


The DM can also make an impact with a few choice houserules - banning Natural Spell and removing Druid companions does a lot to curb their power in low-to-mid-op campaigns, as does limiting Wizard spell access and making all clerics cloistered without access to DMM and Divine Power.

Just gotta ask, how would this help the party where the Wizard is constantly outshined by the Fighter and Monk?

(And is "outshined" really a word? My autocorrect thinks so...)


I guess the 3X game writers assumed everyone playing the game would be a 2E D&D gamer and understand the two concepts so well that they did not need to be put out in plain text. It's a very odd omission.

Yeah, humans are horrible at explanation, and putting words to their assumptions. As such, just as 3.5 has a "reference 3.0 for anything undefined", 3.0 should have a "reference 2e for anything undefined" (the definition of "true Beholder" comes to mind).


:tongue:
Narrative power is not the only choice when it comes to balance. There is also screen time which high tier casters also have options for but i want to bring up because it doesn't get talked about much

This sounds important, but it's likely to get lost in this flood. Maybe we'll circle back to this...


Yep, but assuming Armus wasn't an unusually well educated spellcaster (or maybe something rogue-ish), I have to object! Because if so, I suspect that meta-game knowledge that you, the player, happened to have was the primary source of his narrative power in many cases, or maybe even in most cases. For example, practically regardless of which class you happen to play, it's fairly easy for an experienced player to make their PC stand out as a tactical genius or master negotiator in a party of PC's played by less experienced people. Likewise, the probability that a 7th level non-caster has enough skill ranks in Spellcraft (and/or Know planes?) to have even just some rudimentary basic knowledge of how high level plane-shift magics work isn't exactly high, not to mention knowledge of any specific components which may be required/useful for such magics...

1) Armus was both a prodigy, and had an unparalleled education.

2) many of the players had probably been playing longer than I had - they weren't "less experienced people". Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named? Yeah, 1st level Armus, bound as a Drow prisoner, was more effective in the first combat that his 7th level "rescuers" (Armus killed one high-priestess (aided by her own stupidity), and drove off the second, while the party randomly deployed against "whatever was closest").

3) yes, "directing the narrative" is often "player skill".


That player power - including such things as improvisational acting skills which would've impressed Sanford Meisner himself - can compensate for a PC's lack of mechanical power in many games?

Sounds like you've almost got it. Rather, you should be saying that mechanical power can compensate for lack of player skill in some games. Because "directing the narrative" is first and foremost player choices, player skill.


That all the narrative power of a PC isn't (and shouldn't be) necessarily primarily dependent on the rules?

Again, almost there.


Unfortunately, I don't think this says anything about the balance problems when it comes to the narrative power derived from the mechanics in most games,

Other than that such things do not or should not exist?


but simply that such balance issues can be worsened or mitigated by other factors. I mean, if the mechanics provided by the rules had instead been the primary source of Armus' narrative power,

Yeah, no, lost it again. "Narrative power" is generally independent of power power.


I'd wager it would've been considerable less impressive, and the same would likely be true if Armus had happened to have a very different personality. Imagine how successful he would've been if had happened to have a personality, mindset and tactical ineptitude similar to say Quertus, your mechanically far more powerful wizard.

I mean, that's kinda the point of the story, yeah. :smallwink:

Or, at least, that was my point in making the characters, and in talking about them here, and what I expect people to take away from them in this context. But I left it open-ended, in case anyone saw things that I didn't.


I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it.

Planar Binding can be used to create the next BBEG?


Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

+1 this.


Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.

There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with.

Thank you for explaining that.


After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".

That was a risk.


Guys, are you actually serious now? Because I can't actually remember more than a rare few of the tons of teleports used in actual games which I've run or played in that didn't have narrative power, and typically quite a lot of narrative power. The ability to go from A to B in 6 seconds rather than say two months or even just a few hours can often be a complete game-changer, and in turn also a complete "story-changer". And it's definitely not the same thing as your typical "fast travel" in computer games, unless perhaps if you only have players with remarkably little creativity or tactical and problem-solving skills. On top of that, it often provides a ton of additional alternative solutions to more complex problems which otherwise would've been too risky, resource intense or simply impossible.

Two very simple examples:

The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

Totes serious.

----- example 1 -----

Sure. The party walks several minutes to the demon slayer's home, and convinces him to come save the town. Same narrative power.

Oh, that contradicts established facts? The party sends a raven to the demon slayer, who teleports in to save the town.

Still won't work? The party walks for several months to the high level Wizard's home, explains the situation to him. He uses Teleport Through Time to arrive at the demon slayer's home in time to save the town. Let alone if the party builds a TARDIS themselves.

Or even "the party was smart and informed, knew that a demon was likely, and already had the demon hunter in the area beforehand".

The narrative power here is the ability to convince the demon slayer moreso than one particular technique of getting him to town on time.

Or even, "the party convinces the town that it is hopeless, they are lost, and convinces them to mass-suicide before the demon gets there." Bonus points if the party uses the mass suicide to fuel a ritual.

Because, of course, this is D&D, and nobody ever flees.

----- example 2 -----

The party disguises themselves as orcs, uses bluff, and takes the Royal family "prisoner". Then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, killing any orcs that ask "where are you taking them?" and don't accept "Corrisant" as an answer, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party disguises the royal family as orcs, who take the party prisoner. Then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party disguises everyone as orcs, then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party turns everyone into ravens, who fly to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

Everyone hops out the window into giant eagles, who carry everyone to the neighboring kingdom, where they convince the Queen that she needs to help.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, the party infiltrated the orcs, and turned many key players, who were waiting for the signal. The players trigger the castle "loudspeakers" to yell "game over, man, game over!", at which point many of the orcs turn on their "comrads", routing the orc forces.

The party uses PaO to play "the floor is lava" with the invading orc army. Then they send a raven to the Queen, saying "never mind, we got this". And set to making babies as quickly as possible, so that the castle will once again have sufficient population that scrolls of PaO are available for sale. Bonus points if they use the death of the castle plus invading army to fuel a ritual. Bonus bonus points if said ritual creates a Philosopher's Stone.

----- note -----

Note that, in both examples, I've called you out on your in media res epimethian parties, with examples of "here's stuff the party could have done before now to have affected the narrative at this point".

----- what gives narrative power -----

Well,

Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

Narrative power is primarily player choices, and player skill.

There are, however, things that a GM can do to remove narrative power, like demanding that no solution but the McGuffin will possibly work. I've played under several GMs like that, one of whom nearly ruined one of my favorite characters (a character who I don't talk about much, in part because he's not D&D).

Makes me wonder how many characters who didn't have his stable background of good times under other GMs I may have considered "unfun" simply because of the GM.


Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."


A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.


(Also keep in mind this was merely an example, and the opposite would serve just as well. Like say a player being told or feeling compelled to play his Int 26+ wizard star student of the "War Mage Academy" as a tactically inept coward in order to reduce his narrative power).

I'm all about this. Only, the player shouldn't have to be told. That's a lack of player skill right there. I made my "tactically inept more powerful than the gods" character, who is slightly underwhelming, and my "well-trained Commoner (with items)", who is a bit OP at times, without being told that I need to balance narrative power. I didn't need to be told not to make a "more powerful than the gods tactical genius", or a "tactically inept Commoner" (although I did make a sentient potted plant, as my ultimate demonstration that fun and balance are not inherently related).


Sure, but meta or not, the important point here is that all of these things could just as well or better be accomplished through the game mechanics, especially through the use of spells.

Citation, please.

How would a spell have allowed Armus to control the flow of a "diplomatic" meeting, and establish himself as the party leader?

How would a spell have allowed Armus to negotiate a PC agreeing to part with an artifact?

How would a spell have gotten party members to unknown alternate prime material worlds?


Are you saying that the player cannot possibly have played a high level wizard in some previous game, or never bothered to read up on some spells? And if dirt and gold coins would serve, why not the PCs themselves?

Some of the PCs were returned as corpses, some not at all. Collecting the samples ahead of time allowed Armus to say least inform their next of kin.


And perhaps more importantly, if the components actually weren't needed according to the rules of the spell(s) used, then the components also enabled said spell(s) purely because the GM allowed them to.

It was a gamble, subject to GM whim. Armus presented the laundry list of components he had collected to the NPC Wizard, and I crossed my fingers. There were several other packrats in the party. To paraphrase Cosi, they were "low-level" packrats, solving low level challenges ("I toss the table leg I looted onto the fire", "I use the 'manikin' and 'volumous cloak' I looted to set up a decoy'"), even at high level, whereas Armus was a "high-level" packrat, solving high-level challenges ("How do we return everyone to their planes of origin?"), even at low level.


Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming. Functionally, there are fantasy worlds without instantaneous travel methods, and there are fantasy worlds with them, and if you take the verisimilitude of your fantasy at all seriously then these two worlds have very different structures.

This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.

Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty,

So, even if I asked you to explain how Mat had less narrative power, it wouldn't matter, because that's not an issue in D&D? That's what I'm supposed to take away here?


This sort of blatant narrative imbalance can be seen in the world of D&D novels. Novels about warriors, such as the various Drizzt works, often involve long, complex overland journeys with many encounters along the war. Novels about spellcasters, such as the various Elminster works, tend to ignore these and allow the major characters to teleport across multiple kingdoms in a single day. Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world, they occupy completely different narrative universes. Case in point: Salvatore once wrote about how Drizzt had a profound religious experience by touching a unicorn, a symbol of the goddess Meleikki he worships. Elminster, on regular occasions, talks directly to not one, but multiple, deities.

I would like to think that if Drizzt were 250th level, and the chosen of the conclave of gods, too, that he, too, would talk to gods on a regular basis. Just saying.

Whereas, did you notice how Elminster didn't go around talking to gods when he was a 1st level Rogue, or even a low-level idiot Wizard dieing to a Beholder?

The stories talk about the interesting parts of those characters lives. Elminster's life wasn't very interesting for the first 20 levels or so.

[Ignimortis]

I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.


Eh. The variance in power still exists between, say, a level 1 Warblade and a level 1 Fighter. It's also stylistically different to use different classes rather than using levels (and thus hit dice) for lesser power/breadth differences.

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9). Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.



Just gotta ask, how would this help the party where the Wizard is constantly outshined by the Fighter and Monk?

(And is "outshined" really a word? My autocorrect thinks so...)


I'm not sure how, outside of specifically playing the wizard rather unimpressively, this could happen, but I guess you could give the wizard some better spells as a DM, or allow him to research spells as per guidelines in some book, I can't recall which. To be honest, I'm not sure how you fix this on a houserule level, because Wizards literally get things they need to work from the same book they're printed in, usually.

Of course, if you banned Conjuration as a Wizard, then you might have some problems, but there are so many excellent spells even outside that school that I can't imagine being outshone by the Fighter and the Monk if you're not just Fireballing stuff all the time.

[MeimuHakurei]

@Quertus: In general, most of what you say regarding table stories with your Wizard and Commoner are more outliers you deliberately play in a way that makes them perform above/below the expected level and I can assure you many people won't or can't play a character like Quertus or Armus, respectively. Most tables usually assume a similar level of competence among the players and that none of them deliberately play suboptimal characters/personalities. Which is to say that these players don't exist, but that you generally take that the Wizard won't be tactically inept unless proven otherwise.

And for the example of Forgotten Realms, Drizzt is 16th level (in the 3e adaptation) and hardly an example of a low level character (tbf Elminster is 26th level, but the jump from Level 16 to epic isn't that big narratively).

Finally, just because it's possible for a teleportation spell to not significantly impact the narrative doesn't mean that this ability in general isn't impactful, simply because you shouldn't look at the lowest common denominator as its user (and even then, it's still narratively meaningful if you misfire your teleport into solid rock and get pasted as a result).

[Doctor Awkward]

3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

In the overall sense, no, not really.

So long as you and your group recognize what and where those imbalances are, the fact that 3.5 as a system is capable of supporting a wide variety of optimization and varying levels of play is one of it's greatest strengths.

EDIT: I should rephrase a little.
So long as everyone in your group agrees on what and where those imbalances are. There probably isn't an objectively way to answer that question. The important thing is that everyone at the table is having fun with how the games are being run.

[Cosi]

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9).

I don't understand why you would want to make those distinctions, especially not the Warblade/Fighter one. There's justification for having NPC classes or monster progressions that are numerically appropriate for their level, but not full characters either in terms of tactical depth or story impact, but those aren't supposed to be equal to PCs at all, so it's sort of irrelevant.

But the distinction you're making between the Warblade and the Fighter is that one of them is good and the other one is not. That's exactly the distinction you're supposed to make by having one character have more class levels than the other one. And if it's not and you can imagine how a Fighter could be balanced with an equal-level Warblade, your argument is baseless.

Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that. How does simply having the "Fighter" be a Warblade of whatever level people aren't expected to be super human at not do everything you want while also allowing "level" and "CR" to be useful terms that convey meaningful information?


Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.

Yes, that is how a level system works. If you don't like that, you can play something that doesn't use a level system. And that's fine. Not everything wants or needs a level system. But D&D is going to use one, and that means it's going to have the knock-on effects of having one as well.

[Darth Ultron]

Two very simple examples:

The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?


So by ''increased narrative power" you are just talking about doing ''an action in the game"? I think you might be putting teleport a bit too high up on a pedestal. Teleport is a useful, powerful and even game changing ability...but it does not alter the game reality or anything.

Example 1: Er, ok, so the wizards ''power" here is what? They teleported and got the Macguffin to save the village in less then an hour? Er....so what? If the wizard was ''so great, why did he not stop the cultists in the first place? Or, really, why does the wizard not just ''teleport'' the demon into a volcano or something?

Like say that no characters have teleport....so the characters take four weeks to go get the Macguffin and come back...and then kill the demon. Ok...and, so what?

Example 2: Er, ok, so the wizard saves the family and that is powerful? So..what if the non telporting characters do something like ''sneak in and then sneak the family out" then that counts as just as powerful, right?

And both of the above examples have the same DM problem: the Dm just sits back and lets the teleport happen with a ''oh my hands are tied, I can't do anything" mindset....when this is not true.



Regardless, when something is being made up, it is entirely up to the DM. When the baseline rules are being used, the DM is choosing to do so but to say the way it works is entirely up to them would be inaccurate, so I stand by my statement.

Of course everything in the game is made up. Even if a player thinks they are ''safe" in Baseline Perfect Rule Land Gameplay....er, the DM is still making everything up.

A lot of players don't really grasp this concept: the DM makes everything in the game up.




As for your example, I more meant if you decided the idea with swinging at the goblins wouldn't work, but you didn't tell them (as you said you don't answer the question will this work) and so they swung around and didn't knock the goblins off and were then just hanging on a rope there having done nothing in full view of three angry goblins, never having had a chance to succeed in the first place. While I admit that in a single instance this might be quite funny, it could easily get annoying especially if it let to character death.

This again falls in line with ''you might not want to game with this DM":

Player:"I try my cool idea in the game!"

Dm:"OK!"

Player:"What happens?"

Dm:"Nothing. You loose and never had a chance to succeed in the first place! Haha!"

[zlefin]

@Quertus
what are you referencing for a 3rd ed source having converted iconic spells to a ritual form?

[Gnaeus]

Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named?

In the name is all that is holy I wish that I could forget Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named. Nobody cares about your character. Whom you trot out again and again to make the same ridiculous points about how you can choose to play ineptly. If I could inject my brain with bleach and permanently remove any references to Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named, I would. My life is worse for every reference to Quertus your sig...............

[upho]

Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming.Well, I wouldn't perhaps go as far as saying this is the default. But yes, poofaporting comes with profound implicit demands not only on the setting in order for it to preserve any resemblance of verisimilitude, but also on the GM's skill to run the game. I'm not the slightest surprised to hear many GM's complain about it, as it's arguably the spell more than any other which marks the paradigm shift from the "muggle methods are usually sufficient" kind of game to the "magic 3D-chess with wizards" kind of game.

And even though I personally find poofaporting fun also as a GM precisely because of the nigh infinite new possible ways of "directing the narrative" it enables and the player creativity it encourages, I've also clearly noticed the costs of including the spell. Most notably the vastly increased general complexity of many challenges and the resulting additional GM prep work poofaporting comes with.


An excellent example can be found in the Wheel of Time series, in which teleportation magic (Travelling) comes online in a mass way around book six and drastically changes how all important events play out subsequently. To the credit of the authors, Jordan and Sanderson managed to integrate this at least partially, and included huge armies teleporting from halfway across the planet, cannons firing through portals from caves completely without natural egress, and using the telportation magic as a direct weapon in the narrative.Yeah. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how the WoT handled it. They actually got at least half as far as some of the 3.5/PF1 PCs I've seen in their creative use and seemingly ruthless exploitation of poofaport advantages. And I remember smiling when I read about the stunt with the cannons, as I thought the quite astounding similarities to the various "scry 'n' die/fry" shenanigans the I've witnessed in the game were simply hilarious. I think it's an unusually great example of the sort of whole new vistas of possibilities which poofaporting (and similar spells) opens up for in the hands of creative PCs and players.


The game balance issue, in the context of D&D, is that one subset of classes gets teleportation, and others do not, which means that only those characters have the ability to alter the narrative in this way. However, if you take the setting issues seriously, then widespread teleportation becomes a requirement for adventuring and a party without access to teleportation is going to face huge barriers interacting with the world. This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.This.


Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty, but the absence of abilities can be much more pervasive.Indeed. And anyone who recognizes that there are people who love the higher level "magic 3D-chess with wizards" kind of game and that the system should be able to cater to those people, should also recognize that in order to make that game less ridiculously imbalanced, the mechanical tools available to non-casters must be improved enough they can at least enter the same league of narrative power as those available to casters. IOW, unlike in the books, the game must be able to simultaneously include both Drizzt and Elminster main protagonists.

[Quertus]

1) Well, in this particular context, I would probably say something like "reduce the power discrepancy between characters".

2) Spotlight time is finite. Any problem the Wizard solves is a problem the Fighter doesn't solve. That's not "intentionally trying to steal the spotlight", that's a simple fact. The Fighter has no way of getting the spotlight. And the notion that the Wizard getting an ability increases the Fighter's narrative power is getting dangerously close to "because your character sucks, you get to tell the rest of the party what do to", which is an absolutely terrible paradigm.

3) I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.

Numbered for convenience.

1) balance is not a synonym for fun. Forcing balance limits the types of fun you can have. However, I'll give you a pass, as "Thor and the Sentient Potted Plant" could be implemented as "Level 20 and Level 1" under your proposed metrics.

2) You've largely lost me here. Here's what I hear: "because the Wizard takes 10 seconds of spotlight time teleporting us there, rather than the Survivalist, Orc-hating Ranger having the spotlight for 10 sessions as we trek through Orc country, clearly Teleport is bad for spotlight sharing.

Or, IMO worse, we lost suspension of disbelief as the GM is forced to find things each of us to do as we spend 10 sessions in what should obviously be Ranger spotlight time.

So, what did you actually mean for me to hear here?

3) It's little Timmy's first time playing D&D. Little Timmy's character clearly needs a boost for him to contribute. Do you really believe that the correct answer to balance the party is to give him more levels, and keep letting him level faster than anyone else, in order to maintain contribution balance?


I'm not sure how, outside of specifically playing the wizard rather unimpressively, this could happen, but I guess you could give the wizard some better spells as a DM, or allow him to research spells as per guidelines in some book, I can't recall which. To be honest, I'm not sure how you fix this on a houserule level, because Wizards literally get things they need to work from the same book they're printed in, usually.

Of course, if you banned Conjuration as a Wizard, then you might have some problems, but there are so many excellent spells even outside that school that I can't imagine being outshone by the Fighter and the Monk if you're not just Fireballing stuff all the time.

Player > build > class. And character personality is greater than them all in determining how effective a character is. I've seen it numerous times, although, obviously, I prefer talking about one specific example.

So, should I take your answer to be, "no, nerfing the Wizard class will not help balance in this type of case, where something higher on the food chain than 'build' is the primary determiner of character contribution"?


@Quertus: In general, most of what you say regarding table stories with your Wizard and Commoner are more outliers you deliberately play in a way that makes them perform above/below the expected level

Yes, demonstrating the limits and boundaries of what can be accomplished does, by definition, involve discussing outliers. Thank you for noticing. :smallcool:


and I can assure you many people won't or can't play a character like Quertus or Armus, respectively

Also sadly true.

People who claim to care about balance should carefully consider why they won't play a balanced character in the style of Quertus.


. Most tables usually assume a similar level of competence among the players

That seems a foolish assumption, IME.


and that none of them deliberately play suboptimal characters/personalities.

Thus "the Determinator".


Which is to say that these players don't exist, but that you generally take that the Wizard won't be tactically inept unless proven otherwise.

So, I'm too senile to remember my point, but I'm guessing that it was something like, "there are numerous dials to turn in the quest for balance, from player skill (which you usually cannot change much) to WBL to character level to optimization level to base class to character personality. And this is a good thing.".

What was your point?


And for the example of Forgotten Realms, Drizzt is 16th level (in the 3e adaptation) and hardly an example of a low level character (tbf Elminster is 26th level, but the jump from Level 16 to epic isn't that big narratively).

OK, grognards, what level was the first appearance of stats for Drizzt?

My point was, Drizzt spent at least a trilogy with some fairly minimal gear, and then went back for a prequel trilogy. So 6 books at lower(ish) level, and how many total now to get to 16th? Whereas Elminster "got to the good parts", and skyrocketed up to epic chosen of the gods in, what, the first four chapters* of his first book?

But, yeah, thanks to these examples, we can see that high-level FR characters can look forward to divine epiphanies / being noticed by the gods, whereas epic level characters can look forward to actually hobnobbing with the gods.

* Brilliantly titled "Fighter", "Thief", "Cleric", and "Mage", or some such, IIRC.


Finally, just because it's possible for a teleportation spell to not significantly impact the narrative doesn't mean that this ability in general isn't impactful, simply because you shouldn't look at the lowest common denominator as its user (and even then, it's still narratively meaningful if you misfire your teleport into solid rock and get pasted as a result).

(Lost the context, may come back for it)


Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that.

Well, a few of the reasons I might do such thing include:

* To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;

* Top five those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;

* To allow people bragging rights, like "I completed 'World's Largest Dungeon' (efficient runs from level 1-20, btw) with a Fighter";

* To inform people that mechanical balance is not what this game is about.

Also,

* To do so transparently, so that idiots who don't get there concept of balance don't complain about you "letting them win" by not fielding the most powerful Determinator you can.

I wouldn't play someone with Quertus' power and Armus' tactical genius at any but yours or Tippy's tables, and maybe not even there.


@Quertus
what are you referencing for a 3rd ed source having converted iconic spells to a ritual form?

IIRC, Unearthed Arcana is where I first saw the concept.

[Quertus]

In the name is all that is holy I wish that I could forget Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named. Nobody cares about your character. Whom you trot out again and again to make the same ridiculous points about how you can choose to play ineptly. If I could inject my brain with bleach and permanently remove any references to Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named, I would. My life is worse for every reference to Quertus your sig...............

Lol!

And if I could Mindrape the world, so that I never again heard "nerf the Wizard, for balance", when its long been established that player > build > class (and I've personally established that character trumps them all), I would.

But here we are.

[Morty]

Eh. The variance in power still exists between, say, a level 1 Warblade and a level 1 Fighter. It's also stylistically different to use different classes rather than using levels (and thus hit dice) for lesser power/breadth differences.

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9). Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.

Unless you don't happen to have Tome of Battle, in which case you're stuck with the worse version.

[Cosi]

You've largely lost me here. Here's what I hear: "because the Wizard takes 10 seconds of spotlight time teleporting us there, rather than the Survivalist, Orc-hating Ranger having the spotlight for 10 sessions as we trek through Orc country, clearly Teleport is bad for spotlight sharing.

My point is that Crake is setting up a false dichotomy. There's a finite amount of time, and problems only get solved one way. If the Wizard has abilities that let him solve problems and the Fighter doesn't, the Wizard is going to solve more problems and get more spotlight time than the Fighter.


It's little Timmy's first time playing D&D. Little Timmy's character clearly needs a boost for him to contribute. Do you really believe that the correct answer to balance the party is to give him more levels, and keep letting him level faster than anyone else, in order to maintain contribution balance?

What happens when Timmy wants to play one of the classes that isn't overpowered? What if he really wants to play a Fighter or a Warmage, compounding his lack of skill with a weak class?

The game should have some flexibility for ad hoc balancing, but baking it into the class as a whole is problematic. Plus, it's easier to do that balancing if the classes start from a point of overall balance where behavior is clearly understood. My personal preference is to define a reference set of encounter parameters (X level Y enemies over Z rounds), balance people's contributions in that encounter, and give people distinct resource management systems and ability types so tweaking the parameters makes the encounter more or less favorable for some character or other. So you make the fight last longer if the guy with at-will abilities is under-performing, or add more enemies if the guy with BFC abilities is under-performing, or whatever. But it's vastly easier to make those adjustments without breaking things if the game starts out balanced.

The better the system is to begin with, the easier it is to modify in a way that produces whatever results you want.


To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;

I don't understand why you would want to do that.


Top five those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;

I don't understand what that's supposed to mean.


To allow people bragging rights, like "I completed 'World's Largest Dungeon' (efficient runs from level 1-20, btw) with a Fighter";

You could do that just as well with a level handicap.


IIRC, Unearthed Arcana is where I first saw the concept.

Epic Spellcasting is another (sort-of) example. It's not converting spells into rituals, and it's broken as hell, but the basic idea of "parallel spellcasting system for big flashy effects" is there.

[upho]

1) Armus was both a prodigy, and had an unparalleled education.Which was reflected in his prodigal number of starting skill points and a fittingly extremely high Int and Cha scores along with no low ability scores, as well as the unparalleled number of skill points he had amassed in numerous skills in wildly different areas by 7th level?

So... Would that be maybe max ranks in several Knowledge skills, including more esoteric ones such as planes and arcana, along with max ranks in Spellcraft and I assume Diplomacy, Intimidate, Gather Information, Listen, Search and Spot, plus a few ranks in some basic physical stuff like Climb, Balance and Swim, all of them treated as class skills of course, and many of them further boosted by magic items?


2) many of the players had probably been playing longer than I had - they weren't "less experienced people". Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named? Yeah, 1st level Armus, bound as a Drow prisoner, was more effective in the first combat that his 7th level "rescuers" (Armus killed one high-priestess (aided by her own stupidity), and drove off the second, while the party randomly deployed against "whatever was closest").:smallamused:
1. How many of those supposedly more experienced players would you say would've been capable of playing a PC of equivalent narrative power without mechanical support?
2. So which one is correct:

a) your GM had no grasp of the rules or of the most basic combat tactics,
b) your GM was intentionally ignoring the actual mechanical power of the so called drow "high-priestess" in order to let Armus kill her,
c) your GM decided she had a brain aneurysm at that precise moment so she could act impressively stupid in order to let Armus kill her,
d) Armus was made vastly mechanically superior to any other 1st level PCs in the game,
e) you're the world's greatest tactical genius when it comes to 3.5 combat (but you're not very good at any similar kind of tabletop combat),
f) your group actually plays freeform D&D because you all love the settings but hate all the rules,
g) your GM secretly plays freeform, while you and the other players believe your mechanical abilities and die rolls actually matter
h) you just dreamed the whole thing and it never happened in an actual game


3) yes, "directing the narrative" is often "player skill".OK. While I of course have no problems whatsoever distinguishing between the sources of power (player skill and PC abilities) I still don't see any meaningful difference between "directing the narrative" and "power power". Neither do I see why either source would be inherently more connected to either supposed type of result.


Sounds like you've almost got it. Rather, you should be saying that mechanical power can compensate for lack of player skill in some games.Totally agree here, but I fail to see how this is relevant.


Because "directing the narrative" is first and foremost player choices, player skill.

"Narrative power" is generally independent of power power.Absolutely not. It's becoming abundantly clear that both you and Crake are having great difficulties clearly defining what you call "Narrative power" and "power power" and the differences between these concepts when it comes to their impact on the game. And I think I have a pretty good idea of why, because there simply is no functional or qualitative difference between the two in the way you claim. Instead, you're confusing what you at best describe as some kind of highly arbitrary relative amounts of power ("narrative" being greater than "power") with sources of power, and it appears you fail to understand that any kind of effect a PC has on the game, regardless of source, is per definition having an impact on the "narrative" (and therefore also has "narrative power" in this context).


I mean, that's kinda the point of the story, yeah. :smallwink:I mean, the source of the power (or lack thereof) being completely irrelevant for the power's actual effects on the game was kinda my point, yeah. :smallwink:

Again, the only kind of power you have been discussing is just plain power, nothing more and nothing less, regardless of source and regardless of amount.

Now this is not to say there's no such thing as qualitative differences between types of power, and simply by comparing say the spells teleportation and fireball tells us this is clearly the case. But that's a different discussion you're obviously not having.


Or, at least, that was my point in making the characters, and in talking about them here, and what I expect people to take away from them in this context.Really, what does this actually have to do with the balance of the game itself? You know, that thing which isn't tied to specific "player skill" or "subject to GM whim"?

[zlefin]

@Quertus
while I don't have unearthed arcana handy; assuming it's the same as the "incantations" section listed in the SRD; it specifically does NOT include a number of standard spells like teleport; and it recommends you not make things like the standard teleport, in addition to being harder in general.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm
it also notes they may be very hard to find and have risks.

been a long time since I read 4th ed; but iirc the rituals there specifically included a lot more ordinary utility stuff and were meant to be more reliably available to everyone. the overall rules setup for it (iirc again) was quite different from those incantations in 3rd.

[Crake]

My point is that Crake is setting up a false dichotomy. There's a finite amount of time, and problems only get solved one way. If the Wizard has abilities that let him solve problems and the Fighter doesn't, the Wizard is going to solve more problems and get more spotlight time than the Fighter.

I don't know if you purposefully didn't understand my post, or if I wasn't clear enough with it. I was referring to narrative spotlight time, not mechanical spotlight time (which, as an aside, teleport doesn't give anyone spotlight time, it's not impressive after the first couple of times when the novelty wears off, so you're essentially just deleting that mechanical spotlight time from existence). Whether you get from A to B with a survival hunter or a teleporting wizard is irrelevant, because when you get to B, the whole party is there either way, and are all able to enact their narrative power.

My example about the wizard stealing the spotlight was if the wizard teleported from A to B alone and went ahead and made negotiations with the rival nation or whatever, without the rest of the party, thus denying them any chance at narrative authority and stealing it all for himself. That is what I meant when I said the wizard could teleport off and steal the spotlight for himself.

Part of my point is that 99% of "mechanical" power that people in the party obtain becomes something the whole party has access to, thus at an individual level, mechanical power becomes largely irrelevant, and what becomes more relevant is coming up with the idea, the plan, aka directing the narrative. The wizard having wall of stone and making a fortress at a mountain pass chokepoint to hold off an invading army is all great, but the narrative credit goes to the one who came up with the idea, and if the idea was the fighter's, then sure, the wizard progressed the narrative, but the fighter directed it.

[Cosi]

Yeah, no. The Fighter doesn't have access to wall of stone. The Wizard does. You can tell, because it is a Wizard ability and not a Fighter ability. The Fighter saying "hey you could use your abilities to do X" is at best deciding how the Wizard uses his spotlight time (which is still not the Fighter's), and at worst an attempt to hijack someone else's character.

If every problem gets solved by the Wizard using an ability it doesn't matter if sometimes it's the Rogue or the Fighter's player suggesting what ability to use. Their characters are still unimportant and do not get any spotlight time. Because they don't have abilities that put them in the spotlight.

[Bartmanhomer]

Yeah, no. The Fighter doesn't have access to wall of stone. The Wizard does. You can tell, because it is a Wizard ability and not a Fighter ability. The Fighter saying "hey you could use your abilities to do X" is at best deciding how the Wizard uses his spotlight time (which is still not the Fighter's), and at worst an attempt to hijack someone else's character.

If every problem gets solved by the Wizard using an ability it doesn't matter if sometimes it's the Rogue or the Fighter's player suggesting what ability to use. Their characters are still unimportant and do not get any spotlight time. Because they don't have abilities that put them in the spotlight.

Then that the reason why this game is so unbalanced Tier 1 class trumps everything.

[Crake]

Yeah, no. The Fighter doesn't have access to wall of stone. The Wizard does. You can tell, because it is a Wizard ability and not a Fighter ability. The Fighter saying "hey you could use your abilities to do X" is at best deciding how the Wizard uses his spotlight time (which is still not the Fighter's), and at worst an attempt to hijack someone else's character.

If every problem gets solved by the Wizard using an ability it doesn't matter if sometimes it's the Rogue or the Fighter's player suggesting what ability to use. Their characters are still unimportant and do not get any spotlight time. Because they don't have abilities that put them in the spotlight.

The wizard gets mechanical spotlight time for making the fortress, but the narrative spotlight still goes to the one who came up with the idea, no matter how much you deny it. That's pretty much the point of this narrative power side discussion: anyone in the party can have narrative power regardless of mechanical power, and that mechanical power doesn't somehow give anyone any more narrative power, because the ability to direct the narrative is a player ability. If nobody had ever suggested to make a fortress at the mountain pass, then the wizard's ability to cast wall of stone is pretty irrelevant toward the narrative, isn't it.

[Ignimortis]

I don't understand why you would want to make those distinctions, especially not the Warblade/Fighter one. There's justification for having NPC classes or monster progressions that are numerically appropriate for their level, but not full characters either in terms of tactical depth or story impact, but those aren't supposed to be equal to PCs at all, so it's sort of irrelevant.

But the distinction you're making between the Warblade and the Fighter is that one of them is good and the other one is not. That's exactly the distinction you're supposed to make by having one character have more class levels than the other one. And if it's not and you can imagine how a Fighter could be balanced with an equal-level Warblade, your argument is baseless.

Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that. How does simply having the "Fighter" be a Warblade of whatever level people aren't expected to be super human at not do everything you want while also allowing "level" and "CR" to be useful terms that convey meaningful information?

To be honest, I consider the default Fighter to be an NPC class. It doesn't have enough going on to make it a good PC class, and so I use it as a distinction between characters who have been formally trained to fight (Fighter, often gestalted with other things) and those who have not and who picked up some small measure of skill through surviving their life (straight Warrior levels). So this distinction exists in my setting - there are, so to speak, swordmasters, sword users and sword swingers, who can all be about equally as tough and maybe even have similar out-of-combat skillsets or lack thereof, but the difference in raw combat skill still would be noticeable to an outside observer - this dude just attacks and defends well, this dude just smashes his club around, and this dude just did a triple somersault and beheaded someone with a single blow.

As only one of the three is now considered a PC class on its' own, there are no conflicts about inter-PC balance. Warblade is better than Fighter, that's how it is. If you're a Fighter PC, you should have a Rogue or Ranger or Paladin gestalt to have other stuff that Warblade doesn't get, otherwise you're pretty redundant.


Yes, that is how a level system works. If you don't like that, you can play something that doesn't use a level system. And that's fine. Not everything wants or needs a level system. But D&D is going to use one, and that means it's going to have the knock-on effects of having one as well.

Well, 3.5 gives me enough space to not do things like "every fighter of this style is a Fighter and they just differ by character level". If I wanted a single, somewhat consistent power level for all and every class in the game, I would play 5e or just homebrew a bunch of similarly powerful classes and ditch all the default ones. I can have characters of very different combat skill-levels be pretty similar to each other in raw vitality and proficiency in certains skills. Same with casting - you can have a Warmage and a Wizard at the same time, one is probably going to outshine the other, but the option is there.




Player > build > class. And character personality is greater than them all in determining how effective a character is. I've seen it numerous times, although, obviously, I prefer talking about one specific example.

So, should I take your answer to be, "no, nerfing the Wizard class will not help balance in this type of case, where something higher on the food chain than 'build' is the primary determiner of character contribution"?

Pretty much, yes. All the easily available and powerful options in the world don't matter if you choose not to take them. Thus, the player either needs to be guided to those options (if they don't like being constantly outshone and just don't realize how powerful their class can be), or they can be very well left alone if they're fine with what they have.


The wizard gets mechanical spotlight time for making the fortress, but the narrative spotlight still goes to the one who came up with the idea, no matter how much you deny it. That's pretty much the point of this narrative power side discussion: anyone in the party can have narrative power regardless of mechanical power, and that mechanical power doesn't somehow give anyone any more narrative power, because the ability to direct the narrative is a player ability. If nobody had ever suggested to make a fortress at the mountain pass, then the wizard's ability to cast wall of stone is pretty irrelevant toward the narrative, isn't it.

Ah, but the wizard has the power to make his narrative idea a reality. The fighter doesn't. Isn't that narrative power? Being able to influence the narrative by yourself?

[Mechalich]

The wizard gets mechanical spotlight time for making the fortress, but the narrative spotlight still goes to the one who came up with the idea, no matter how much you deny it. That's pretty much the point of this narrative power side discussion: anyone in the party can have narrative power regardless of mechanical power, and that mechanical power doesn't somehow give anyone any more narrative power, because the ability to direct the narrative is a player ability. If nobody had ever suggested to make a fortress at the mountain pass, then the wizard's ability to cast wall of stone is pretty irrelevant toward the narrative, isn't it.

You're confusing player and character narrative power here. Any player can come up with an idea that the entire party implements at a strategic, tactical, diplomatic, or purely utilitarian level, this is not necessarily true of any character. In fact, due to the nature of D&D character statistics a properly built martial character is unlikely to come up with ideas useful to the party because they will not have the raw mental capacity or the necessary skills to do so, and if they do those abilities are in direct tension with the need to optimize their primary combat function.

To use OOTS for illustrative purposes: Thog is moderately optimized as a barbarian, and his character is completely and totally unable to contribute to any scenario that does not involve dealing HP damage. Roy is massive and deliberately non-optimized as a Fighter (to the point of having cross-class skills in Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering), this allows him to function as a party face, leader, and tactician, but it means he only survives a fight with Thog (and various other entities like Durkula) via the deployment of some fairly powerful narrative fiat (for instance, in the most recent battle Roy somehow avoided getting dominated post-dispel, while Vaarsuvius and Hilgya did not, which implies he rolled a nat 20 multiple times given the disparity in Will saves).

As a result, maximizing the mechanical power of a D&D Fighter, Barbarian, or Paladin means minimizing their narrative power at the same time (Rangers escape this to a large degree).

Now, at a lot of tables GMs wisely allow characters to bypass the actual stats on their character sheet and play their characters exactly as smart as the player can think to be (this also happens with Clerics and other Divine casters, who tend to have blatantly average Int scores but high Wisdom). This is generally a good thing, but it is overriding the system design.


To be honest, I consider the default Fighter to be an NPC class. It doesn't have enough going on to make it a good PC class, and so I use it as a distinction between characters who have been formally trained to fight (Fighter, often gestalted with other things) and those who have not and who picked up some small measure of skill through surviving their life (straight Warrior levels). So this distinction exists in my setting - there are, so to speak, swordmasters, sword users and sword swingers, who can all be about equally as tough and maybe even have similar out-of-combat skillsets or lack thereof, but the difference in raw combat skill still would be noticeable to an outside observer - this dude just attacks and defends well, this dude just smashes his club around, and this dude just did a triple somersault and beheaded someone with a single blow.

As only one of the three is now considered a PC class on its' own, there are no conflicts about inter-PC balance. Warblade is better than Fighter, that's how it is. If you're a Fighter PC, you should have a Rogue or Ranger or Paladin gestalt to have other stuff that Warblade doesn't get, otherwise you're pretty redundant.

That's certainly an acceptable house rule option, the problem is that this is not what the game says on the tin.

D&D is a level based game. The whole point of having a level-based system is that levels are a rough measure of functional power and characters, and there are repeated claims in the first party material that this is true. It is not. This is a falsehood, a deception that cuts to the center of the class-and-level structure of modern D&D. Note that in 2e AD&D each class has its own leveling table and levels were not considered to measure equality, total XP value was, and part of the problem with the 3e adjustment was that they failed to properly correct for this.

The problem is compounded because 'fighter' is the most basic and common fantasy archetype available, and it seems like the logical class for a new player to take. They'll be able to contribute without having to mange complicated subsystems. This is untrue, because without complex management using a specialized build a fighter won't be able to effectively contribute and will in fact struggle to match the output of a Druid's Animal Companion. The actual class a newbie should play is the Warlock - because a player who just uses Eldritch Blast every round will be fine - but that class isn't in the 3.X core and isn't if PF at all.

Ultimately the problem with the inherent imbalance in D&D isn't that it exists, lot's of games are imbalanced, many of them far worse (cough, Rifts, cough). The problem is that the designers, spread across two different companies, have claimed that is balanced when it's not.

[Crake]

You're confusing player and character narrative power here. Any player can come up with an idea that the entire party implements at a strategic, tactical, diplomatic, or purely utilitarian level, this is not necessarily true of any character. In fact, due to the nature of D&D character statistics a properly built martial character is unlikely to come up with ideas useful to the party because they will not have the raw mental capacity or the necessary skills to do so, and if they do those abilities are in direct tension with the need to optimize their primary combat function.

To use OOTS for illustrative purposes: Thog is moderately optimized as a barbarian, and his character is completely and totally unable to contribute to any scenario that does not involve dealing HP damage. Roy is massive and deliberately non-optimized as a Fighter (to the point of having cross-class skills in Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering), this allows him to function as a party face, leader, and tactician, but it means he only survives a fight with Thog (and various other entities like Durkula) via the deployment of some fairly powerful narrative fiat (for instance, in the most recent battle Roy somehow avoided getting dominated post-dispel, while Vaarsuvius and Hilgya did not, which implies he rolled a nat 20 multiple times given the disparity in Will saves).

As a result, maximizing the mechanical power of a D&D Fighter, Barbarian, or Paladin means minimizing their narrative power at the same time (Rangers escape this to a large degree).

Now, at a lot of tables GMs wisely allow characters to bypass the actual stats on their character sheet and play their characters exactly as smart as the player can think to be (this also happens with Clerics and other Divine casters, who tend to have blatantly average Int scores but high Wisdom). This is generally a good thing, but it is overriding the system design.

You don't need 30 intelligence to come up with an idea, and likewise, having 30 intelligence doesn't mean you're guaranteed to come up with a great idea. A fighter with 10 int is perfectly plausible in coming up with decent ideas, and yes, the point is that narrative power comes from player ability. There's literally no way for mechanics to actually provide narrative power, because that comes from creativity and decision making, something that the rules can't give you.

[Ignimortis]

Ultimately the problem with the inherent imbalance in D&D isn't that it exists, lot's of games are imbalanced, many of them far worse (cough, Rifts, cough). The problem is that the designers, spread across two different companies, have claimed that is balanced when it's not.

Ah, well, yes. That's why I said upthread that any new group needs someone with 3.5 experience, which is probably the worst part about it. If you've got an experienced player who can just tell everyone that Wizards are usually much better than Fighters, and Warblades (for players who don't mind some more complexity) or Barbarians (for players who just want to kill stuff and take its' things) are also pretty much better than Fighters, then it's also much easier to do things that will be fun for everyone involved.

And as long as most of D&D's and by extension PF's sacred cows stay alive, the designers will continue to claim that it's balanced and it actually won't be. Neither 5e or PF 2e do enough stuff to actually fix the imbalances. But, well, I would again refer to Snowbluff's Axiom and agree with you, and say that 3.5 was wrong not in actual design, but in presentation.

[Ignimortis]

There's literally no way for mechanics to actually provide narrative power, because that comes from creativity and decision making, something that the rules can't give you.

I don't get that. So if you don't have a Wizard or anyone who can make a fortress quickly, then what good is that idea? How is daydreaming "man, it sure would be cool to have a fortress in this place" narrative power? How are you influencing the narrative by having the idea without having a way to execute that idea? You either have the means to do things you want to do, or you don't. That's narrative power. Ideas are nothing without a way to make them real, and if someone else has to make your ideas real, because you don't have the ability to do so yourself, then it's not your power. You are basically acting as the muse at best.

[Crake]

I don't get that. So if you don't have a Wizard or anyone who can make a fortress quickly, then what good is that idea? How is daydreaming "man, it sure would be cool to have a fortress in this place" narrative power? How are you influencing the narrative by having the idea without having a way to execute that idea? You either have the means to do things you want to do, or you don't. That's narrative power. Ideas are nothing without a way to make them real, and if someone else has to make your ideas real, because you don't have the ability to do so yourself, then it's not your power. You are basically acting as the muse at best.

You work within the constraints of what you have available, obviously coming up with an idea you can't execute is pointless, but using the tools you have available to provide a direction for the narrative isn't something the rules can provide. Sure, maybe you don't have wall of stone, but maybe you have leadership and a whole garrison of workers, or maybe the king trusts you and you can get the local populace to construct the fortress, point is even lois lane can contribute to the narrative next to superman, regardless of the fact that she has no superpowers.

[Mechalich]

You don't need 30 intelligence to come up with an idea, and likewise, having 30 intelligence doesn't mean you're guaranteed to come up with a great idea. A fighter with 10 int is perfectly plausible in coming up with decent ideas, and yes, the point is that narrative power comes from player ability. There's literally no way for mechanics to actually provide narrative power, because that comes from creativity and decision making, something that the rules can't give you.

The average Fighter with Int 10 has 0 ranks in any knowledge skills. That means they know only 'common knowledge.' They have no understanding of monster abilities they haven't personnaly experienced, they don't know how fortifications work, they do not understand advanced tactics, and because they don't have any ranks in Spot or Listen, they have any situational awareness worth a d*** either. A 3.5 fighter plausibly knows how to climb walls, maintain their weapons and armor, train a dog, look fearsome, making a running leap, ride a horse, and swim. That is the some total of things they know how to do. Everything else requires cross-class skills and if therefore implausible. Yes, this includes a wide range of concepts, such as: recognizing the traits of common non-human opponents (various knowledges), leading small squad combats (diplomacy and gather information), serving as a sentry (Spot and Listen), choosing which loot to carry off a corpse (appraise), launching a surprise attack (move silently), etc. that they don't have the skills to viably do, and don't have the skill points to support doing even if they did. You know who does have most of those skills? The Aristocrat NPC class. The aristocrat is far better at producing a viable quasi-medieval trained soldier than either the fighter or the warrior. Meanwhile a Wizard, or any other Int-based character, has a huge bonus to all Int based skill checks, and has the spare points to take a whole bunch of them. A Wizard with Int of 30 has a nice shiny +10 to any Int-based skill check, meaning they can put 1 rank into any Int-based skill and Take 10 for a 21, which is pretty nice, and there are a lot of Int-based skills.

Oh, and an optimized Fighter doesn't have Int 10. Int is a Fighter dump stat, and you can very easily play a Fighter or Barbarian with Int 6, all you're losing is some skill points, and that's not much of a loss since you've got no good skills anyway. At Int 6, no, it isn't plausible to come up with good ideas.

Mechanics absolutely can, and do provide narrative power. At the simplest level the mechanical power to brutally murder all other members of the party at your whim translates into the narrative power to make said party do whatever you want. This isn't very nice and is a gameplay no-no, but it absolutely is power. On the opposite side the power to completely ignore threats that could utterly slaughter other party members also provides narrative power, specifically the power to ignore those threats and move on without wasting time, which is a mechanical power that the GM is forced to adjust the narrative to accordingly or by cheating outright. This is a common issue in superhero games wherein one character often literally cannot be harmed by levels of damage that instantly kill other members of the party. In such a situation the GM is forced to cheat and have certain enemies only attack certain party members or accept that one player will be completely immune to damage for the entirety of the campaign, and if you actually read or watch comics you can see this sort of blatant cheating in action all the time.

[Quertus]

@Cosi - I, if not agree with you, at least find most if what you said reasonable and internally consistent. So, unless they come up later, rather than quibble over minor details, I'll just say, "sounds reasonable". But,


I don't understand why you would want to do that.

I don't understand what that's supposed to mean.

Dang, I lost the context. Back in a minute, senility willing.

EDIT:

"To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;" - because sometimes I'm in a group with little Timmy.

"Top five those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;" - wow, autocorrect. :smallredface: Let me try again:

"To give those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;" - some people enjoy the act of optimization. If they optimize a good (or "balanced") character, the result will be too strong for their table. Instead, you let them optimize a suboptimal concept / class / whatever up to the table's balance range, and everyone's happy.


Which was reflected in his prodigal number of starting skill points and a fittingly extremely high Int and Cha scores along with no low ability scores, as well as the unparalleled number of skill points he had amassed in numerous skills in wildly different areas by 7th level?

So... Would that be maybe max ranks in several Knowledge skills, including more esoteric ones such as planes and arcana, along with max ranks in Spellcraft and I assume Diplomacy, Intimidate, Gather Information, Listen, Search and Spot, plus a few ranks in some basic physical stuff like Climb, Balance and Swim, all of them treated as class skills of course, and many of them further boosted by magic items?

I would love to see the breakdown of what parts of my stories lead you to conclude each of these. :smallamused:




:smallamused:
1. How many of those supposedly more experienced players would you say would've been capable of playing a PC of equivalent narrative power without mechanical support?

Out of the 14 there? Maybe two, if they cared (neither ever showed any such interest, so I'm just guessing). Three, I imagine, if my brother had been there for that campaign.



2. So which one is correct:

a) your GM had no grasp of the rules or of the most basic combat tactics,
b) your GM was intentionally ignoring the actual mechanical power of the so called drow "high-priestess" in order to let Armus kill her,
c) your GM decided she had a brain aneurysm at that precise moment so she could act impressively stupid in order to let Armus kill her,
d) Armus was made vastly mechanically superior to any other 1st level PCs in the game,
e) you're the world's greatest tactical genius when it comes to 3.5 combat (but you're not very good at any similar kind of tabletop combat),
f) your group actually plays freeform D&D because you all love the settings but hate all the rules,
g) your GM secretly plays freeform, while you and the other players believe your mechanical abilities and die rolls actually matter
h) you just dreamed the whole thing and it never happened in an actual game

False... Octotomy? So, the GM never really explained it, but, from what I've inferred, the closest was "c", except that it was supposed to be part of the plot.

The Drow were acting very... odd. Honestly, initially, I thought it was more "A", the GM was an idiot. But, the more I looked at it, the more there actually seemed method to it. For example, the Priestess who fled... I don't remember the GM's words, but, to paraphrase, acted like she was a dream, and Armus' actions (unfortunately) started to wake her up. Later, the GM gave several other clues as to what was going on, but afaict, nobody cared. No, not even Armus, who was too busy fighting "Hart's War" to spare time for that detail beyond noting it for future reference in case it was required (it was not).


EDIT: definitely not "D", in fact the exact opposite (which was part of the point of the character, to be as mechanically weak as I could make him). And where did you get "but you're not very good at any similar kind of tabletop combat"? :smallconfused:


OK. While I of course have no problems whatsoever distinguishing between the sources of power (player skill and PC abilities) I still don't see any meaningful difference between "directing the narrative" and "power power". Neither do I see why either source would be inherently more connected to either supposed type of result.

Absolutely not. It's becoming abundantly clear that both you and Crake are having great difficulties clearly defining what you call "Narrative power" and "power power" and the differences between these concepts when it comes to their impact on the game. And I think I have a pretty good idea of why, because there simply is no functional or qualitative difference between the two in the way you claim. Instead, you're confusing what you at best describe as some kind of highly arbitrary relative amounts of power ("narrative" being greater than "power") with sources of power, and it appears you fail to understand that any kind of effect a PC has on the game, regardless of source, is per definition having an impact on the "narrative" (and therefore also has "narrative power" in this context).

... What? That sounds just about backwards from what I'm saying. Much like your conclusions previously sounded almost backwards from my understanding. This sounds fun!*

So, Armus got a PC to hand over a treasured artifact. He utilized his amazing "paid attention when PCs talked about themselves" skills to utilize backstory details to seal the deal.

To my understanding of the terms,

* This was narrative power, because Armus shaped the course of events (artifact changed hands).

* This was not "power" power, because what button did I push / what statistic on Armus' sheet did I use to choose and utilize this particular tactic?

So, to try to turn that into definitions (not my strong suit, so this may take a few attempts),

* Narrative power is the ability to shape the flow of events, through the actions and choices of the character.

* "Power" power is the statistical attributes of the character.

-----

* I base this on my experience learning about databases (which I love), but my initial impression was that they talk backwards. Seriously, people have shirts, and shirts have buttons. But ask a database, and buttons have shirts, and shirts have people.


I mean, the source of the power (or lack thereof) being completely irrelevant for the power's actual effects on the game was kinda my point, yeah. :smallwink:

Again, the only kind of power you have been discussing is just plain power, nothing more and nothing less, regardless of source and regardless of amount.

Now this is not to say there's no such thing as qualitative differences between types of power, and simply by comparing say the spells teleportation and fireball tells us this is clearly the case. But that's a different discussion you're obviously not having.

Really, what does this actually have to do with the balance of the game itself? You know, that thing which isn't tied to specific "player skill" or "subject to GM whim"?

So, just to be clear, my sentient potted plant, who viewed "mobility" and "ability to push buttons" as super powers far beyond his ken, to your mind has "power power" when he remembers where we parked?

And, when that's his important contribution to the party escaping, you would say that he is "more powerful than Thor", who did not remember where we parked, and thus did not contribute to that scene (beyond, of course, carrying my poor plant)?

Are you really contending that the potted plant is more powerful than Thor by your definition of "power"?

If so, please define "power".


@Quertus
while I don't have unearthed arcana handy; assuming it's the same as the "incantations" section listed in the SRD; it specifically does NOT include a number of standard spells like teleport; and it recommends you not make things like the standard teleport, in addition to being harder in general.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm
it also notes they may be very hard to find and have risks.

been a long time since I read 4th ed; but iirc the rituals there specifically included a lot more ordinary utility stuff and were meant to be more reliably available to everyone. the overall rules setup for it (iirc again) was quite different from those incantations in 3rd.

AFB. That's... probably the one? Although I thought Plane Shift was explicitly one of the example rituals (or whatever they were called).


Yeah, no. The Fighter doesn't have access to wall of stone. The Wizard does. You can tell, because it is a Wizard ability and not a Fighter ability. The Fighter saying "hey you could use your abilities to do X" is at best deciding how the Wizard uses his spotlight time (which is still not the Fighter's), and at worst an attempt to hijack someone else's character.

If every problem gets solved by the Wizard using an ability it doesn't matter if sometimes it's the Rogue or the Fighter's player suggesting what ability to use. Their characters are still unimportant and do not get any spotlight time. Because they don't have abilities that put them in the spotlight.


The wizard gets mechanical spotlight time for making the fortress, but the narrative spotlight still goes to the one who came up with the idea, no matter how much you deny it. That's pretty much the point of this narrative power side discussion: anyone in the party can have narrative power regardless of mechanical power, and that mechanical power doesn't somehow give anyone any more narrative power, because the ability to direct the narrative is a player ability. If nobody had ever suggested to make a fortress at the mountain pass, then the wizard's ability to cast wall of stone is pretty irrelevant toward the narrative, isn't it.

So, I kinda agree with both of you, I guess?

The Wizard's power makes "make a fortress" an option - or, at least, a viable one in a short timeframe. Enough stonemasons with enough time could do the same thing.

The Wizard's power directs creativity towards utilizing that power, warping the narrative to favor certain solutions.

The Fighter can absolutely have the spotlight during the planning phase, saying "this would be so much easier with battlements, say Wizard can your wall spell do that", and planning out the exact optimal defenses. Unless the Wizard is a ****, that's narrative power for the Fighter.

When it comes time to implement this strategy, yes, the Wizard probably has (or maybe shares) the spotlight then. But that's probably not narrative power (unless, again, the Wizard is a ****).

So, it depends a bit on what you see, what you care about, and where the focus the game is, as to who you think gets the spotlight here.

It sounds like if Crake came up with the plans, and Cosi implemented them, then they'd both be happy in a game, feeling that they contributed.

[Ignimortis]

You work within the constraints of what you have available, obviously coming up with an idea you can't execute is pointless, but using the tools you have available to provide a direction for the narrative isn't something the rules can provide. Sure, maybe you don't have wall of stone, but maybe you have leadership and a whole garrison of workers, or maybe the king trusts you and you can get the local populace to construct the fortress, point is even lois lane can contribute to the narrative next to superman, regardless of the fact that she has no superpowers.

But that's the point. Wizards only need to have a spell available. That's entirely under their control. Thus, their narrative power is high on their own, because it's easy to get a spell as a wizard, if your DM is not acting specifically against that, and even if he is, you can still build in a way that lets you have tons of spells. As a Fighter, you can't have those resources by yourself, and you not having them is not the DM acting against you having them, it's the DM not acting to give them to you.

So in essence, a Wizard can be self-sufficient in regards to having influence on the plot. A Fighter has to rely on lots of external things that might or might not be there for him to use. So Fighter, as a class, has little to no narrative power. Any one single Fighter might have it, but not the class itself.

[upho]

----- example 1 -----

The party sends a raven to the demon slayer, who teleports in to save the town.And why do you assume a raven would be able to fly the equivalent of a two week muggle traveling distance in time for the demon hunter to arrive in time to save the village? And why do you believe the demon hunter cleric has immediate access to teleport? Even if the party did have some means to alert the cleric within seconds, I'd say that last bit unfortunately still makes this plan highly unlikely to succeed, to say the least.


Still won't work? The party walks for several months to the high level Wizard's home, explains the situation to him. He uses Teleport Through Time to arrive at the demon slayer's home in time to save the town. Let alone if the party builds a TARDIS themselves.They know a 17+ level Wizard now? Who's able and willing to cast teleport through time? OK. But if this had been the case, it seems unlikely the demon hunter cleric, not to mention the likely 10-ish level party itself, would be needed to deal with the demon.


Or even "the party was smart and informed, knew that a demon was likely, and already had the demon hunter in the area beforehand".Sure. Except the party most likely weren't that smart considering their failure. Which means they'd likely need an ability to jump back in time after failing to stop the demon from appearing in the first place. And honestly, I don't think many parties able to teleport will assume a few crazy demon cultists are going to present much of a problem, at least not long before their failure actually stares them in the face. And even if we assume they actually were that smart, your suggestion also assumes they knew of the demon threat already at the time when they last met the demon hunter, which may very well have been months if not years ago. Honestly, this seems pretty far fetched to me.


The narrative power here is the ability to convince the demon slayer moreso than one particular technique of getting him to town on time.Why do you think so? We are talking about a demon hunter cleric here, which I had hoped would convey the whole "holy champion fanatically dedicated to hunting down and ending demons" shtick. Meaning you likely don't need to do much convincing if you pop up at his temple covered in blood and gore and obviously horrified, stammering about a big badass demon about to eat a village and pleading for his help...


Or even, "the party convinces the town that it is hopeless, they are lost, and convinces them to mass-suicide before the demon gets there." Bonus points if the party uses the mass suicide to fuel a ritual.

Because, of course, this is D&D, and nobody ever flees.:smallbiggrin: If I ever find myself in a similar situation as a PC again, this is gonna be my suggestion. What? Shift to Evil alignment you say? Of course, that would be whole intent I say. Because EVILTM is simply far more METAL, and fantasy and metal is obviously a thing... A thing one can expect any half-way decent GM would reward you for having achieved purely through the highest quality of realistic and dramatic RP-driven in-game character growth.

This did actually happen in a real game about 15 years ago, and it's a rather embarrassing memory and the cause of quite a few internal jokes/sayings still used by the people who were in that group. The greatest reason for this is of course that our party failed to stop the cultist from calling the demon in the first place, and they did so purely because they were uncharacteristically sloppy and high on their own awesomeness from their latest major victory, while also vastly underestimating the many potential difficulties of the whole thing.

So the GM as well as the players were already pretty convinced a major disaster was unavoidable, when our cleric sadly concludes that we're now gonna need the help of someone like his veteran demon hunter colleague to stop the demon, and that it'll likely take weeks for him simply to get here. But then the sorcerer and rogue (me) realize we probably have a scroll of teleport somehow forgotten for something like 7 levels, and the sorcerer still has a single 5th-level slot left. So after some frantic digging around in our bags of holding (the GM watching in disbelief as the players go through year-old notes)... Bingo!

In short, the whole thing was pretty much pure fluke. But without those two teleports, I can't see how we would've been able to save many villagers from having bodies and souls horribly tortured and literally eaten.

So kids, don't even think about going out the door without a party "fail-pop" once you're past 9th level!



----- example 2 -----

----- note -----

Note that, in both examples, I've called you out on your in media res epimethian parties, with examples of "here's stuff the party could have done before now to have affected the narrative at this point".This is frankly pure BS. Yes, I realize I left out quite a bit of important info in my description of especially this second example (I'll bring it back if/when I have the time to add to it) as I foolishly didn't foresee this kind of analysis, which I apologize for. But seriously, you really need to stop jumping to conclusions!

Note that I never said that saving the royal family was ever being presented as any kind of real possible means to affect the narrative, let alone a goal the party would somehow be expected to achieve, nor that the party starts inside the keep. Likewise, I never said that stopping the demon from munching villagers was ever being presented or considered as any kind of actually realistic goal. Because my point was simply that poofaporting enables you to do stuff far outside the earlier level boundaries of the game, and thus also typically gives creative players/PCs a major boost of narrative power. So yes, it's pretty much impossible to achieve a positive impact even remotely close to those described if the party cannot poofaport, and that is precisely the very reason why the spell is so powerful.

And of course, had any of these examples actually been presented in a real game as realistic goals, then you would've been correct, or at least less wrong, to call the GM an incompetent fool.


Narrative power is primarily player choices, and player skill.And the power of the PC's mechanical abilities. Saying otherwise is simply saying all those abilities don't mean jack and don't matter more than the color of your d20.


There are, however, things that a GM can do to remove narrative power, like demanding that no solution but the McGuffin will possibly work. I've played under several GMs like that, one of whom nearly ruined one of my favorite characters (a character who I don't talk about much, in part because he's not D&D).This is just sad. I just cannot understand how some people simply cannot keep their (hopefully) worst sides from dictating their games and ruining the fun for those involved. In my world, TTRPGs are first and foremost played together with friends, or at least people you have good reason to believe will become your friends.

And this makes it significantly easier for me to understand your reactions to my examples. You have my sympathy.


Makes me wonder how many characters who didn't have his stable background of good times under other GMs I may have considered "unfun" simply because of the GM.Well, as you already know you're unfortunately far from alone. I've read so many posts on this forum alone where people have problems I most likely thankfully won't ever encounter. And yeah, more or less terrible GMs are perhaps the most common complaint. And I've realized I've been - and still am - extremely spoiled when it comes to both players and GMs.


I'm all about this. Only, the player shouldn't have to be told. That's a lack of player skill right there. I made my "tactically inept more powerful than the gods" character, who is slightly underwhelming, and my "well-trained Commoner (with items)", who is a bit OP at times, without being told that I need to balance narrative power. I didn't need to be told not to make a "more powerful than the gods tactical genius", or a "tactically inept Commoner"Agreed. But then I hope you also realize that it's both unfair and frankly mean to demand players to counter balance issues by playing brilliant or inept characters, especially in a game like 3.5 where simply realizing whether you ought to do one or the other requires quite a bit of system mastery.


(although I did make a sentient potted plant, as my ultimate demonstration that fun and balance are not inherently related).Sorry, but are you actually saying your "ultimate demonstration" is that surprising to most people? If so, that is weird, indeed.

But I do also really think you should be a lot more careful in making sweeping assumptions about the game in general, or about the preferences of those who play it, based on your own "demonstrations". Your potted plant PC doesn't say anything about the game at all beside the fact that you can play as a potted plant. It does however say things about you and your games specifically. So merely using that term - "demonstration" - is not only grossly misleading, but more importantly risks invalidating any of your associated points, even those that are actually good.


Citation, please.

How would a spell have allowed Armus to control the flow of a "diplomatic" meeting, and establish himself as the party leader?Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, (mass) charm person, dominate person, detect thoughts, certain bardic performances, several illusion spells, do I really need to go on?


How would a spell have allowed Armus to negotiate a PC agreeing to part with an artifact?Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, charm person, detect thoughts, suggestion and several divination spells. Now I'll grant you that since this is very much an intra-party "challenge", it's already by default largely limited to RP rather than mechanics (and many of my suggestions may not be very nice and especially the use of Diplomacy between PCs is iffy also per RAW, to say the least). And while my group would most likely have a similar kind of IC discussion if facing a similar problem, it's worth keeping in mind that there seem to be plenty of groups which would either never even consider the idea that a PC maybe should give their inherited staff to another. Not to mention plenty of groups who would simply agree giving the staffs to the noobs would be optimal in less than 30 seconds OoC before the session has even started.


How would a spell have gotten party members to unknown alternate prime material worlds?Not really valid, consider this was based on GM fiat from pretty much start to end. Nevertheless, in a game where this unique kind of spell exists, there are plenty of mechanical tools which ought to have given Armus plenty of actually reliable info saving him and his party a lot of time. The most obvious being Spellcraft, Know Arcana and/or Planes checks, plus any abilities boosting those checks, of course. But also something as simple as one single casting of a suitable divination spell.


It was a gamble, subject to GM whim.And that's the far most important detail, and unfortunately it invalidates the entire purpose of mentioning this example in this context. There's simply very little in there to help us determine whether the game's imbalance causes serious problems and/or grants significant benefits.

[Lans]

Oh, and an optimized Fighter doesn't have Int 10. Int is a Fighter dump stat, and you can very easily play a Fighter or Barbarian with Int 6, all you're losing is some skill points, and that's not much of a loss since you've got no good skills anyway. At Int 6, no, it isn't plausible to come up with good ideas.



A lot of fighters have a 13 Int due to feat req. Some even take knowledge skills.

[MeimuHakurei]

The whole idea of the Fighter getting by with clever ideas and strategizing with the capabilities of their party members completely fail to account for the fact that it's both possible for the other players to have this kind of cleverness (you ought to be really skillful to succeed as a Level 1 Wizard after all) and that it's possible for the ingenious Fighter to also be playing a Cleric or Druid instead. It's also not really an argument for balance if the Fighter has to put in extra work to be relevant which the caster class trio is right out of the box (And some more of the casters also).

[ShurikVch]

Two very simple examples:

The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?Or wizard may mishap the teleport, FUBARing the quest and dying ingloriously as a result
Teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleport.htm) is a Russian roulette - you may hope to arrive safely, but you can't ensure it
Meanwhile, humble Expert (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/expert.htm) may get the job done via several successful skill checks (which are way easier to ensure for a dedicated character)



However, if you take the setting issues seriously, then widespread teleportation becomes a requirement for adventuring and a party without access to teleportation is going to face huge barriers interacting with the world.Note - there is such things as adventuring in the Underdark. How would you teleporting there?
And it's just the most glaring example - there are pretty much other instances when teleportation is impossible, or impeded - such as within 700 miles from the Spire in Outlands, or in the area under the Black Labyrinth (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070307a) effect...

[zlefin]

@Quertus
they don't have a general planeshift in there (and iirc there shouldn't be a generalized planeshift ritual)
what they do have is a highly specific planeshift which shifts you to a specific location on a specific plane. so if you want to go anywhere else you'd need to find a different ritual.

[Crake]

The whole idea of the Fighter getting by with clever ideas and strategizing with the capabilities of their party members completely fail to account for the fact that it's both possible for the other players to have this kind of cleverness (you ought to be really skillful to succeed as a Level 1 Wizard after all)

Actually, it's not failing to take that into account. That is infact the whole point. All players have equal capability for narrative direction, despite their potential mechanical ineptitude.


and that it's possible for the ingenious Fighter to also be playing a Cleric or Druid instead. It's also not really an argument for balance if the Fighter has to put in extra work to be relevant which the caster class trio is right out of the box (And some more of the casters also).

The talk of narrative power isn't an argument claiming that it makes the game balanced, what it is arguing is that despite the imbalance, all players have the capability to shine, regardless, by making narrative choices.

[DeTess]

Maybe it'd be a good idea to actually define 'narrative power', before everyone starts discussing it? Some people seem to use a definition where narrative power is 'the ability to make decisions and come up with plans', while other use 'the ability to personally change the narrative', and I think this results in a lot of discussion and people talking past eachother. For example, if using the first definition, a fighter coming up with the fortress idea has a lot of narrative power, while in the second case the fighter would have none, because he needs the wizard to actually affect the change to the story.

[ryu]

Maybe it'd be a good idea to actually define 'narrative power', before everyone starts discussing it? Some people seem to use a definition where narrative power is 'the ability to make decisions and come up with plans', while other use 'the ability to personally change the narrative', and I think this results in a lot of discussion and people talking past eachother. For example, if using the first definition, a fighter coming up with the fortress idea has a lot of narrative power, while in the second case the fighter would have none, because he needs the wizard to actually affect the change to the story.

Eh, by either definition the Fighter is deciding jack-all. He's offering a proposal the wizard may or may not act on. The wizard is the one actually deciding things. He could just as easily say something along the lines of: "Nah I've a much more effective thing to do here." or: "Eh, I didn't prepare wall of stone this morning. I could evacuate some people." Or even: "Didn't bother with conjuration today, you, you, and you are now cryohydras."

Decision ultimately always falls to the person DOING.

[Quertus]

1) call the GM an incompetent fool.

2) Agreed. But then I hope you also realize that it's both unfair and frankly mean to demand players to counter balance issues by playing brilliant or inept characters, especially in a game like 3.5 where simply realizing whether you ought to do one or the other requires quite a bit of system mastery.

3) But I do also really think you should be a lot more careful in making sweeping assumptions about the game in general, or about the preferences of those who play it, based on your own "demonstrations". Your potted plant PC doesn't say anything about the game at all beside the fact that you can play as a potted plant. It does however say things about you and your games specifically. So merely using that term - "demonstration" - is not only grossly misleading, but more importantly risks invalidating any of your associated points, even those that are actually good.

4) Sorry, but are you actually saying your "ultimate demonstration" is that surprising to most people? If so, that is weird, indeed.

5) Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, (mass) charm person, dominate person, detect thoughts, certain bardic performances, several illusion spells, do I really need to go on?

Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, charm person, detect thoughts, suggestion and several divination spells. Now I'll grant you that since this is very much an intra-party "challenge", it's already by default largely limited to RP rather than mechanics (and many of my suggestions may not be very nice and especially the use of Diplomacy between PCs is iffy also per RAW, to say the least). And while my group would most likely have a similar kind of IC discussion if facing a similar problem,

5b) it's worth keeping in mind that there seem to be plenty of groups which would either never even consider the idea that a PC maybe should give their inherited staff to another. Not to mention plenty of groups who would simply agree giving the staffs to the noobs would be optimal in less than 30 seconds OoC before the session has even started.

6) Not really valid, consider this was based on GM fiat from pretty much start to end.

6) And that's the far most important detail, and unfortunately it invalidates the entire purpose of mentioning this example in this context. There's simply very little in there to help us determine whether the game's imbalance causes serious problems and/or grants significant benefits.

Numbered for convenience (and, yes, there are two #6)

1) that's not what I was doing.

2) sigh. "GM grog think game no work right, krag do to much. Grog pull out nerf bat on krag" doesn't seem to require much brainpower or understanding of the game. Neither does toning down your character when you realize that you're OP by sharing the spotlight or whatever. Quertus and Armus just represent engineered balance (OK, Quertus was purely accidental, he was engineered psychology that happened to be fun and balanced), demonstrating that it is possible - yes, with system mastery and knowledge of the group - to engineer such things without requiring epimethian fixes.

3) ? So, how is "demonstration" the wrong word?

4) well, much like I never met a 2e group that didn't try to "correct" me when I ran Amalak, and said that my AC was 11 (which was worse than 10), it sure seems to surprise many people that balance and fun are not synonyms.

5) well, an awful lot if that isn't spells, doesn't work on PCs, and/or will have bad consequences down the road. About the only one that would have helped at any of my tables was Detect Thoughts, and it wouldn't have had the desired effect for either scene at this particular table.

Oh, wait, you notice Detect Thoughts in 3e. Never mind. They all would have been worse than what Armus did. So I reject your examples that spells could have done it "better".

5b) absolutely. This was quite the gamble, and wouldn't have worked (or wouldn't have been necessary) at many tables. Which transitions into #6 nicely.

6) Narrative power isn't Magic Missile, it isn't "push button, get effect", it isn't science. It's swinging a sword, it's hoping things work as intended, it's art.

Narrative power is inherently subject to GM (or other player) whim. That doesn't invalidate it, that's the point.

I choose not to slaughter all the goblin children. I don't know what effect that will have. But that's narrative power, at least under a good GM.

The GM who absolutely required the McGuffin and who nearly ruined one of my favorite characters? He believed in the "law of unintended consequences" (which is fine), but did not believe in the "law of intended consequences". So much so that I listed it as a "major accomplishment" when one of my character's actions actually had the intended* effect. He was not amused.

* Which only worked because that didn't look like what he intended to happen.


Actually, it's not failing to take that into account. That is infact the whole point. All players have equal capability for narrative direction, despite their potential mechanical ineptitude.

The talk of narrative power isn't an argument claiming that it makes the game balanced, what it is arguing is that despite the imbalance, all players have the capability to shine, regardless, by making narrative choices.

+1 this.

I'd just add that, if you know the group, and have the skills, you can build your own character to balance your mechanical and narrative contribution - and maybe even encourage the group to do likewise.

[ShurikVch]

Eh, by either definition the Fighter is deciding jack-all.Unfortunately, I'm unable to find it for quoting, but I remember vividly as some OP tell about how one player "overshadowing their whole party"
Herewith, the OP played as a Wizard, and the "gamebreaker" - as a single-class Fighter... :smalleek:

[Quertus]

Unfortunately, I'm unable to find it for quoting, but I remember vividly as some OP tell about how one player "overshadowing their whole party"
Herewith, the OP played as a Wizard, and the "gamebreaker" - as a single-class Fighter... :smalleek:

You mean, someone other than me?

Although, really, the party Monk outshines us all.

[ryu]

Unfortunately, I'm unable to find it for quoting, but I remember vividly as some OP tell about how one player "overshadowing their whole party"
Herewith, the OP played as a Wizard, and the "gamebreaker" - as a single-class Fighter... :smalleek:

We are talking about what making decisions means when a fighter presents a plan for the party wizard to implement. I made a point of stating that decision is at the point of DOING on the grounds that a proposal means nothing compared to spells available. Especially when the fighter doesn't even necessarily know what spells the wizard has available, doubly so if this is to be an in the day problem. Even if not the wizard may not have even taken wall of stone yet, or even inexplicably banned conjuration.

[MeimuHakurei]

Unfortunately, I'm unable to find it for quoting, but I remember vividly as some OP tell about how one player "overshadowing their whole party"
Herewith, the OP played as a Wizard, and the "gamebreaker" - as a single-class Fighter... :smalleek:

If you basically never use the Wizard abilities at any point and the game's challenges are something a decent party 5 levels lower could handle well, yes, the Fighter can feel like a game breaker. Especially if there's never any swarms, fliers, incorporeals, floating castles, underwater ruins, teleporting outsiders, enchantment spells, ability drain, undefined locations, stealth missions, intrigues, negotiations, harsh climates etc. in the entire campaign.

[Morty]

We are talking about what making decisions means when a fighter presents a plan for the party wizard to implement. I made a point of stating that decision is at the point of DOING on the grounds that a proposal means nothing compared to spells available. Especially when the fighter doesn't even necessarily know what spells the wizard has available, doubly so if this is to be an in the day problem. Even if not the wizard may not have even taken wall of stone yet, or even inexplicably banned conjuration.

The fact that some schools are so clearly better that banning them is unwise, while others are more disposable, are just another form of imbalance that'll crop up even if you stick to the same "tier" of gameplay. Just like the imbalance between weapons and fighting styles will rear its head even if you stick to fighters, rogues and other Muggles.

[Quertus]

Eh, by either definition the Fighter is deciding jack-all. He's offering a proposal the wizard may or may not act on. The wizard is the one actually deciding things. He could just as easily say something along the lines of: "Nah I've a much more effective thing to do here." or: "Eh, I didn't prepare wall of stone this morning. I could evacuate some people." Or even: "Didn't bother with conjuration today, you, you, and you are now cryohydras."

Decision ultimately always falls to the person DOING.


We are talking about what making decisions means when a fighter presents a plan for the party wizard to implement. I made a point of stating that decision is at the point of DOING on the grounds that a proposal means nothing compared to spells available. Especially when the fighter doesn't even necessarily know what spells the wizard has available, doubly so if this is to be an in the day problem. Even if not the wizard may not have even taken wall of stone yet, or even inexplicably banned conjuration.

1) you realize that, by your definitions, the boss isn't deciding anything, it's only the employees "doing" that are making decisions. Is that really what you believe?

2) "hey, Wizard whom I've seen create walls of stone out of thin air..."

3) "... how long would it take you to build X?"

4) ”Three days? OK guys, we just need to hold the pass for 3 days. Let's make a plan for that."

5) note that I did include a clause about the Wizard being a ****, and not playing ball.

So, for example, the player who is just there to hang out with friends, who doesn't care about or put one moment's thought into the game, is playing the Wizard. Do you really see them getting any spotlight time out of the Fighter planning siege fortifications, and them just saying, "sure, I do that."?

[ryu]

The fact that some schools are so clearly better that banning them is unwise, while others are more disposable, are just another form of imbalance that'll crop up even if you stick to the same "tier" of gameplay. Just like the imbalance between weapons and fighting styles will rear its head even if you stick to fighters, rogues and other Muggles.

While various schools are better or worse, banning isn't mandatory by any means and there is no combination of bans short of literally prestiging to ban more schools that will make a wizard incapable of contributing to a tier one party. Lose conjuration, transmutation, and illusion? The remaining schools are still going to be better WITH SPELLS SELECTED RANDOMLY than a fighter. With spells selected with purpose easily better than most tier 3s and possibly a few tier 2s.

Meanwhile the boss in an employer employee relationship has a position of power because the worker has agreed to do what he says in exchange for money. Money itself is a form of power.

The fighter has offered the wizard no compensation and is entitled to no control whatsoever of his actions save the general agreement that he travels with the group and works toward its aims. He has his own character to micromanage. If I'm to solve a problem entirely on my own merits I'll damn well pick whatever solution I like.

[Morty]

While various schools are better or worse, banning isn't mandatory by any means and there is no combination of bans short of literally prestiging to ban more schools that will make a wizard incapable of contributing to a tier one party. Lose conjuration, transmutation, and illusion? The remaining schools are still going to be better WITH SPELLS SELECTED RANDOMLY than a fighter. With spells selected with purpose easily better than most tier 3s and possibly a few tier 2s.

Meanwhile the boss in an employer employee relationship has a position of power because the worker has agreed to do what he says in exchange for money. Money itself is a form of power.

The fighter has offered the wizard no compensation and is entitled to no control whatsoever of his actions save the general agreement that he travels with the group and works toward its aims. He has his own character to micromanage. If I'm to solve a problem entirely on my own merits I'll damn well pick whatever solution I like.

I'm not saying a wizard with poorly-chosen schools is worse than a fighter, by any means. I just sort of used your post to point out that even if we stick to the same general "tier" of classes, imbalance is going to come up anyway.

[ryu]

I'm not saying a wizard with poorly-chosen schools is worse than a fighter, by any means. I just sort of used your post to point out that even if we stick to the same general "tier" of classes, imbalance is going to come up anyway.

The claim of everyone being completely equal with a same tier class was never made. All that matters is close enough for no one to feel like/be dead weight yes/no. Stay within the same tier and no combination of options other than deliberately gimping yourself will cause problems. Even then deliberately banning conjuration transmutation and illusion is a pretty severe gimping that is never going to occur unless deliberate. Or new party which means the others are at most a few random good picks ahead on average ANYWAY.

[Bartmanhomer]

I think the tier list was never meant to have an equal and balance power of all classes in the first place. This is just the same thing with Super Smash Bros. Games. Go figure. :tongue:

[MeimuHakurei]

I think the tier list was never meant to have an equal and balance power of all classes in the first place. This is just the same thing with Super Smash Bros. Games. Go figure. :tongue:

The tier list didn't put these classes in those power levels, the tier list was made as a tool to observe the different narrative impacts and abilities of the various classes. I don't think the general idea of such a list to estimate how much a class or other build option could warp a game (scrying, teleportation, resurrection, permanent spells and others are all examples of majorly setting- and gameplay-altering effects) is misguided at all even though JaronK's initial list still has a number of flaws (notably the Tier 2/3 distinction). As with other team-based games with tier lists, it is possible for a low tier class to excel in a higher tier group just for covering a niche the other classes can't fill well enough.

[Bartmanhomer]

The tier list didn't put these classes in those power levels, the tier list was made as a tool to observe the different narrative impacts and abilities of the various classes. I don't think the general idea of such a list to estimate how much a class or other build option could warp a game (scrying, teleportation, resurrection, permanent spells and others are all examples of majorly setting- and gameplay-altering effects) is misguided at all even though JaronK's initial list still has a number of flaws (notably the Tier 2/3 distinction). As with other team-based games with tier lists, it is possible for a low tier class to excel in a higher tier group just for covering a niche the other classes can't fill well enough.

Ok that make sense. Thank you for correcting me. :smile:

[Cosi]

The tier list was meant to model how many problems each class causes for DMs if you assume that the party includes characters from every tier and classes have access to roughly the resources JaronK thinks are plausible (for example, Factotums get a 3.0 skill and a web enhancement feat, while Dread Necromancers can't use any of the half-a-dozen options they have to get magic circle). Since then, it has evolved to the point that most people have no real idea what the metrics it uses actually are and instead view it as meaning "the fact that imbalance exists at all".


Then that the reason why this game is so unbalanced Tier 1 class trumps everything.

That's one way of looking at it. But the other way of looking at it is that the classes that aren't in Tier One simply don't have the tools to deal with the challenges the classes that are do (this is more accurate if you say "Wizard Balance Point" rather than "Tier One", because the Tiers are kind of dumb). You can think those tools are good or not, but it's wrong to look at this simply as Wizards being too good.


As only one of the three is now considered a PC class on its' own, there are no conflicts about inter-PC balance. Warblade is better than Fighter, that's how it is. If you're a Fighter PC, you should have a Rogue or Ranger or Paladin gestalt to have other stuff that Warblade doesn't get, otherwise you're pretty redundant.

Then you're not really arguing with the principle. We could quibble about whether the distinction between Warrior and Fighter is worth making, but ultimately there's nothing wrong with having multiple levels of enemy complexity, and whether you have one level bellow PC-strength or two is ultimately not especially important. The problem is with having dramatically and intentionally imbalanced PC classes, because those classes do need to be balanced.


Well, 3.5 gives me enough space to not do things like "every fighter of this style is a Fighter and they just differ by character level".

I don't really understand why this is responsive to the thing you're quoting, rather than being an extension of the previous point, but whatever. In any case, why wouldn't you want people with the same fighting style to be mechanically similar? And yes, you do want some difference between characters, but again, that can be accomplished with balanced classes.


Same with casting - you can have a Warmage and a Wizard at the same time, one is probably going to outshine the other, but the option is there.

Again, I get that. But why would you want to do that? What do we get by having a Warmage that is just kinda worse than the Wizard? Wouldn't the game be better if the Warmage had enough logistics magic and buff spells to be competitive with the Wizard?


"To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;" - because sometimes I'm in a group with little Timmy.

Except it doesn't make that easier. If you make all the classes of roughly equal strength, the imbalance between is capped at player skill. But if you make classes imbalanced, you could get the new player picking a weak class and the experienced one picking a strong class, and that makes the imbalance worse. You want some mechanisms to correct for imbalances, but those should be things that you could ignore if you don't need them. Because otherwise you risk making balance even worse.


"To give those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;" - some people enjoy the act of optimization. If they optimize a good (or "balanced") character, the result will be too strong for their table. Instead, you let them optimize a suboptimal concept / class / whatever up to the table's balance range, and everyone's happy.

I think people enjoy complexity. I'm less convinced they enjoy optimization itself. Some people like making a character with a bunch of moving parts, and those people should be given an opportunity to do so, but that doesn't require substantial power differentials.


The whole idea of the Fighter getting by with clever ideas and strategizing with the capabilities of their party members completely fail to account for the fact that it's both possible for the other players to have this kind of cleverness (you ought to be really skillful to succeed as a Level 1 Wizard after all) and that it's possible for the ingenious Fighter to also be playing a Cleric or Druid instead. It's also not really an argument for balance if the Fighter has to put in extra work to be relevant which the caster class trio is right out of the box (And some more of the casters also).

Yeah, pretty much. Frankly, the people who come up with complicated and novel uses of abilities tend to gravitate towards classes with those abilities. And that puts lie to Crake's notion that it doesn't matter who had the ability. People's observed behavior has them valuing having abilities much more than directing them.

[Bartmanhomer]

That's one way of looking at it. But the other way of looking at it is that the classes that aren't in Tier One simply don't have the tools to deal with the challenges the classes that are do (this is more accurate if you say "Wizard Balance Point" rather than "Tier One", because the Tiers are kind of dumb). You can think those tools are good or not, but it's wrong to look at this simply as Wizards being too good.

Is not just Wizard that outshines the others tiers. Clerics and Druids are the same tiers as wizards. And this raises a few eyebrows to the other players who aren't tier 1 class. Even if the other classes are very well optimized who aren't tier 1 class the tier 1 classes still trumps than the very well optimized non-tier 1 class and this may cause other non-tier 1 player to leave the game which makes the game less fun.

[jdizzlean]

you could make a game w/ 1 and only 1 character, who's only defining characteristic was what color skin it had, and there would still be people that cry about "balance".

any version of d&d (or almost any rpg) can go from a 3yr old's skill set up to jesus walking on water. the only time "balance" becomes an issue is when one player is actively trying to subvert the others at the table, or break the game a la the Henderson Scale (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson).

everything else is just semantics.

[Quertus]

The fighter has offered the wizard no compensation and is entitled to no control whatsoever of his actions save the general agreement that he travels with the group and works toward its aims. He has his own character to micromanage. If I'm to solve a problem entirely on my own merits I'll damn well pick whatever solution I like.

The "people who demand teamwork" thread could have used more of this sentiment, I think.

First off, you're not "solving the problem entirely in your own merits" - the party is determining the optimal way for the party to solve the problem. In this scenario, perhaps the Fighter holding the choke point entirely on his own merits (healed by the Cleric, entirely on his own merits) that you created (entirely with your power, but totally the Fighter's idea) is what is under discussion.

So, if the Fighter comes up with the best plan, and the Wizard says, "no, because I didn't come up with it, I'm not doing it", then the Wizard is a ****.

(BTW, I now want to build a vain Wizard, who uses Kauper's Skittish Nerves, Wall of Stone, and Fabricate as his contribution. He goes first, holds an action to BFC, and, after the battle, turns the walls into statues of himself)


1) Except it doesn't make that easier. If you make all the classes of roughly equal strength, the imbalance between is capped at player skill. But if you make classes imbalanced, you could get the new player picking a weak class and the experienced one picking a strong class, and that makes the imbalance worse. You want some mechanisms to correct for imbalances, but those should be things that you could ignore if you don't need them. Because otherwise you risk making balance even worse.

2) I think people enjoy complexity. I'm less convinced they enjoy optimization itself. Some people like making a character with a bunch of moving parts, and those people should be given an opportunity to do so, but that doesn't require substantial power differentials.

3) People's observed behavior has them valuing having abilities much more than directing them.

Numbered for convenience.

1) I see where you're coming from, I just... disagree? No, that's not right. I agree, but... don't care? Still not right.

I suppose, I care less about what fail cases ignorant users produce than I do about the success cases you enable for skilled users?

I have little issue with the game punishing you for being dumb if you remove the "trap option" concept, and make the imbalance more visible.

2) Well, I made Illyrian, who has a table of ACs, based on weapon & fighting style used, and attack that he is subjected to. I made Crystal, who rolled more dice for initiative than most people roll all combat. I made "one level of every class". I've made a lot of stuff.

But it's a different drive than the drive to optimize.

Armus is all about, "what can I do with nothing?" Suerra is all about optimizing something my brother (a true MtG "Spike") declared "unplayable".

They satisfy different itches.

3) different people are different, different people value different things.

Which I think is great.

It means that the people who value power can play Thor, and the people who value planning can play a sentient potted plant.

(Me, I can generally enjoy either).

[Crake]

Except it doesn't make that easier. If you make all the classes of roughly equal strength, the imbalance between is capped at player skill. But if you make classes imbalanced, you could get the new player picking a weak class and the experienced one picking a strong class, and that makes the imbalance worse. You want some mechanisms to correct for imbalances, but those should be things that you could ignore if you don't need them. Because otherwise you risk making balance even worse.

*ahem*.... The DM.

Get this: There's a whole section in the DMG about maintaining balance! Isn't that amazing?

[Hackulator]

*ahem*.... The DM.

Get this: There's a whole section in the DMG about maintaining balance! Isn't that amazing?

Cosi does not accept the DM as any sort of important part of the rules sytem.

[ryu]

By all means come up with fun methods to use your own resources. So long as it works to solve whatever problem is present nobody has the right to complain about how you went about contributing, so long as you actually do something.

In a world where there are endless solutions to any given problem, the given person solving the issue will do so as they do so.

[Crake]

Cosi does not accept the DM as any sort of important part of the rules sytem.

I would wonder if Cosi holds that stance when he's DMing

[MeimuHakurei]

I would wonder if Cosi holds that stance when he's DMing

That stance is basically saying that a DM houseruling or adjudicating to correct imbalances is more of a damage control than it is a central mechanic. Saying that it's on the DM to correct imbalances and faulty rules is implying there's nothing wrong with game systems like Spawn of Fashan, FATAL or RaHoWa either since it's obviously on the DM to handle the totally incomplete rulesets, grievous imbalances and offensive themes properly.

[Morty]

GMing is a difficult enough job without holes in the system making it more difficult. Especially if the GM is inexperienced with the system, or running games in general. Or running a high-level game, and so on. "The GM will fix it" is a platitude that implies people who complain about massive problems with the systems just can't be bothered to GM properly.

[ryu]

GMing is a difficult enough job without holes in the system making it more difficult. Especially if the GM is inexperienced with the system, or running games in general. Or running a high-level game, and so on. "The GM will fix it" is a platitude that implies people who complain about massive problems with the systems just can't be bothered to GM properly.

Which is why the simple solution is to just lock to within the tier or within a tier. The wizards can wizard, the muggles can muggle, everyone knows what to expect. The only slightly annoying bit is determining what monsters in what games, but it's much simpler than designing for a group of mixed tiers.

Why I value this method over Cosi's? Solves the stated issue, with less work, and meets the demand of people saying they want access to low power games. No muss, no fuss.

[Mechalich]

Which is why the simple solution is to just lock to within the tier or within a tier. The wizards can wizard, the muggles can muggle, everyone knows what to expect. The only slightly annoying bit is determining what monsters in what games, but it's much simpler than designing for a group of mixed tiers.

Why I value this method over Cosi's? Solves the stated issue, with less work, and meets the demand of people saying they want access to low power games. No muss, no fuss.

Locking to tier is an example of the GM solving an existing mechanical problem through house rules. The Tier system does not appear within published material anywhere, rather the published material makes an explicit claim that a 15th level fighter and a 15th level wizard are, all other things like WBL being equal, roughly equivalent in power.

To even utilize tier classifications as a measure of insuring balance requires awareness that the tiers exist in the first place, and many GMs do not have that awareness. A big part of the problem with the inherent imbalances of 3.X is that it places a system mastery bar in front of effective play and if that bar is not met by the GM, then an ongoing game can self destruct when an imbalance emerges - and because of the way the balance issues interact with the level system, these kinds of issues can emerge spontaneously during play very easily, for instance as is being described in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?580724-Should-I-tone-it-down), on this very forum, today.

Speaking as a GM, I acknowledge that balance issues in a system will always exist, but extreme balance issues like 3.X D&D has forces the GM to monitor builds - and how monsters interact with those builds - at all times, which is an extra layer of work that cuts into prep and gaming time and time is a limited resource. At its worst, extreme intra-party imbalances offer the GM with a nigh impossible encounter design problem: anything that can harm character A at all effortlessly one-shots character B (this is a common problem in superhero games as well, and why putting Black Widow on the Avengers alongside Thor is something you can't actually do in tabletop).

If a game isn't going to try and maintain intra-party balance it should make that clear from the get go, so that the game can be planned accordingly, and if the game is going to try and maintain intra-party balance around a stated metric then it needs to do a decent job of doing so or a critical design goal has not been met. 3.X D&D claims to have balance that it doesn't have, this is one of the major design failures of the edition(s), and that failure has ruined endless numbers of encounters, sessions, and whole campaigns over the life of the product. This is a problem with the product, it does matter, and we should admit that. Recognizing it is an important part of considering whether or not to use the system and also looking at how mechanics should be modified when building new systems. It's not for nothing that 4e, 5e, and apparently the upcoming Pathfinder 2e have all taken massive steps to mitigate this issue. Now whether or not those steps have been effective or worthwhile is a different discussion, but the problem is clear.

[ryu]

Annnnnnnnnnd who exactly cares? Anyone deep enough into D&D 3.5 to be reading 3.5 either understands how things work and see the simple solution for what it is, or is stubborn enough that they'll see things as they are fine.

D&D 3.5 is accidentally the closest to flawless tabletop experience that has ever existed. All you need to do is be upfront about the inherent inequality, label everything, and you're done.

[Cosi]

Is not just Wizard that outshines the others tiers. Clerics and Druids are the same tiers as wizards. And this raises a few eyebrows to the other players who aren't tier 1 class. Even if the other classes are very well optimized who aren't tier 1 class the tier 1 classes still trumps than the very well optimized non-tier 1 class and this may cause other non-tier 1 player to leave the game which makes the game less fun.

I'm not necessarily disputing that dynamic, I'm saying that you can as easily frame it as "the Fighter is underperforming" as "the Wizard is overperforming", and there are good reasons to frame it the first way when you look at the abilities people actually have. Only Tier One or Tier Two classes have access to telport. That means if you think teleport is a valuable part of the game -- and I submit that it is -- you are accepting that at least some degree of the power of Tier One classes needs to be preserved.


I suppose, I care less about what fail cases ignorant users produce than I do about the success cases you enable for skilled users?

You're not really enabling any success for skilled users. Even if you can't build dumb, you can still play dumb, and in a well-designed system e.g. encounter design should provide enough hooks to correct for expect imbalance.


I would wonder if Cosi holds that stance when he's DMing

This about covers it:


GMing is a difficult enough job without holes in the system making it more difficult. Especially if the GM is inexperienced with the system, or running games in general. Or running a high-level game, and so on. "The GM will fix it" is a platitude that implies people who complain about massive problems with the systems just can't be bothered to GM properly.

When I'm DMing, I want to spend my time crafting an interesting setting, creating compelling opponents, and designing dynamic encounters. I accept that I'll have to do some balance tweaking, but I want to do as little of that as possible, because that is the least interesting part of DMing. That's what I don't get about the other side. I'm not saying you shouldn't fix the imbalances that do arise, I'm saying that the system is better if less of them to, and the fact that you can fix them doesn't mean they're not important.


Why I value this method over Cosi's? Solves the stated issue, with less work, and meets the demand of people saying they want access to low power games. No muss, no fuss.

So does a level system though. We can argue about whether a 1st level Wizard is balanced with a 1st level Fighter, but there's certainly some level of Fighter he's balanced with. Why not re-scale that to 1st level, then let people play whatever classes they want in any game? What are we getting out of a system where you can't expect a Fighter to contribute to a party with a Wizard? Are whatever levels of Fighter between "1st level Fighter" and "probably like 3rd level Fighter" really critical to anyone's experience of the game? As far as I can tell, the appeal is basically that everyone can write 20th level on their character sheet at some point, but in exchange it doesn't mean anything to do that.

As far as the "less work" thing goes, that's totally true. But we're not just talking about how to use the system, we're talking about how it should be designed. Bans and houserules and whatever are useful, but they're workarounds we have to use to because the system doesn't work the way we want already.


Speaking as a GM, I acknowledge that balance issues in a system will always exist, but extreme balance issues like 3.X D&D has forces the GM to monitor builds - and how monsters interact with those builds - at all times, which is an extra layer of work that cuts into prep and gaming time and time is a limited resource. At its worst, extreme intra-party imbalances offer the GM with a nigh impossible encounter design problem: anything that can harm character A at all effortlessly one-shots character B (this is a common problem in superhero games as well, and why putting Black Widow on the Avengers alongside Thor is something you can't actually do in tabletop).

Again, this is the point. DMing is really hard. There are lots of ways to fail, and it requires a lot of work. There's absolutely no reason to make it even harder by forcing DMs to monitor for imbalanced characters and broken rules. I adds nothing to the game, and a good game includes as little of it as possible. What the pro-imbalance people are saying is that we should make the hardest job at the table even harder. That's absurd.

[ryu]

See Cosi, here's the thing. I don't know WHY anyone would want to play a level twenty fighter, or a level one fighter, or anywhere in between. It is incomprehensible. I also don't care why. I only know that they do. Therefore a solution which does that has added value of less work getting all those people to accept it. As for how the system should be designed, people WANT to do these things, and the system can accomplish that. Therefore it is better because more people are happy.

[Cosi]

The thing is, I don't think people want to play a 20th level character that is less powerful than other 20th level characters. They want to play things like "a great swordsman" or "a simple character", and those are things that are completely compatible with balance.

[Bartmanhomer]

The thing is, I don't think people want to play a 20th level character that is less powerful than other 20th level characters. They want to play things like "a great swordsman" or "a simple character", and those are things that are completely compatible with balance.

But people choose whatever character and class that they feel comfortable playing. To me I play whatever character and class by any tier. Weak, Strong, Average. I really don't care. As long that I'm having fun playing with the character that all it matters. :smile:

[Morty]

Fighters aren't just weak, they're bad. Even in in a low-powered "gritty" game, it's a point-buy character with a staggered progression and only one unit size for its abilities, plus annoying prerequisites. And around level 6 they stop being gritty, anyway. They're weak against level-appropriate threats or opponents, but compared to most of the world they're superhuman. And even in a party of fighters, if one of them picks better feats and another picks worse ones, the latter will be much less effective.

[ryu]

The thing is, I don't think people want to play a 20th level character that is less powerful than other 20th level characters. They want to play things like "a great swordsman" or "a simple character", and those are things that are completely compatible with balance.

See, at least one guy does. Now you could posit that at some point their desire will stop, or they'll change their mind, but for now that niche is real.

[zlefin]

you could make a game w/ 1 and only 1 character, who's only defining characteristic was what color skin it had, and there would still be people that cry about "balance".

any version of d&d (or almost any rpg) can go from a 3yr old's skill set up to jesus walking on water. the only time "balance" becomes an issue is when one player is actively trying to subvert the others at the table, or break the game a la the Henderson Scale (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson).

everything else is just semantics.

you're simply wrong and arguing poorly.
on your first paragraph: that some people will make stupid claims regardless of the merits doesn't matter much; because we're dealing with an actual case here where there are merits. so it's not really relevant (except perhaps as a narrow counterpoint)

second paragraph: simply factually wrong. we've had numerous testimonials of people for whom balance was a problem and noone was trying to break the game or subvert others; it happened entirely by accident. when people don't know it's easy to break things by accident.

[EldritchWeaver]

Annnnnnnnnnd who exactly cares? Anyone deep enough into D&D 3.5 to be reading 3.5 either understands how things work and see the simple solution for what it is, or is stubborn enough that they'll see things as they are fine.

I care, and I read enough to know about imbalances (granted, I play PF, but it isn't different in these key issues). But I'm not sure what the simple solution is. In my private game I banned too weak things and too strong things (and incidentally difficult to play things) and replaced them with SoP/SoM options.


D&D 3.5 is accidentally the closest to flawless tabletop experience that has ever existed. All you need to do is be upfront about the inherent inequality, label everything, and you're done.

What criteria are you using? Because when using mine, being forcefed Vancian casting is a strong negative. In addition, once you label everything, what happens next?Are people still free to choose the weak options and the strong options? Then you still end up with problematic party compositions. Do you say then "Told you so!", if anyone complains?

[ryu]

I care, and I read enough to know about imbalances (granted, I play PF, but it isn't different in these key issues). But I'm not sure what the simple solution is. In my private game I banned too weak things and too strong things (and incidentally difficult to play things) and replaced them with SoP/SoM options.



What criteria are you using? Because when using mine, being forcefed Vancian casting is a strong negative. In addition, once you label everything, what happens next?Are people still free to choose the weak options and the strong options? Then you still end up with problematic party compositions. Do you say then "Told you so!", if anyone complains?

And so you ban everything above a certain level of power and everything below, also anything which personally annoys you. The solution is not different. Only some minor quibbles.

Winning tabletop criteria is a positive experience that can't be replicated better, faster, easier by another method. No video game replicates fully tier 1 play. If there was I'd play that instead because same experience, but less work setting pens, and paper, and dice, and mats, and other people. As we do not live in this world, 3.5 is the only relevant tabletop rpg. Pathfinder is acceptable, but not crazy about it.

Edit: Can't force the horse to drink. Refuse the easy solution and get miserable for it, and it's not my fault. Now had it been attempted and failed we'd iterate based on circumstance.

[Gnaeus]

second paragraph: simply factually wrong. we've had numerous testimonials of people for whom balance was a problem and noone was trying to break the game or subvert others; it happened entirely by accident. when people don't know it's easy to break things by accident.

This.

I was in a game once where team was (swashbuckler, CW Samurai (but he decided that was too strong, so he rerolled as a monk), rogue, fighter, Druid.). It was over a decade ago so none of us really knew about tiers. The Druid was mid op, so nothing weird like aberrant form, but generally picking decent companions, spells, wildshape forms. We hit a point where there were 2 of every monster, the Druid and tiger killed one. Rest of party fought the other. And usually the Druid finished first and helped. Fighter and rogue ragequit without discussion with DM or Druid player, Samurai and swashbuckler didn’t care so game proceeded.

I was in another game, gestalt, where the 3 players were diviner wizard//monk, something//archaeologist Bard, and some kind of chain tripper gish. Now, part of the problem was the gestalt, and part was comparative optimization of players, and part was T1 Wizard vs T3 classes, but the Wizard//monk exceeded the party power level in every regard. DPR, AC, Saves, utility, special defenses. When we hit low teens, the power disparity became so great that the DM ran out of contrived fights that could challenge the Wizard//monk but not floorwipe the others, so game ended. It wasn’t even like a planar binding/Polymorph thing, just straight up mechanical superiority (if I get everything to key off Int, then throw GMW and a bunch of other long term buffs up.....)

All unintended. It’s absolutely possible. Especially, as in these cases, when optimization and tier differences go together, but they often do, because the people who are good at reading lots of rules and combining effects gravitate to classes with lots of combinable effects, which tend to be the strongest classes.

[upho]

Or wizard may mishap the teleport, FUBARing the quest and dying ingloriously as a result
Teleport (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleport.htm) is a Russian roulette - you may hope to arrive safely, but you can't ensure it'Course. But it's not exactly Russian roulette, more like "darn problematic". And often, you can minimize that risk significantly. For example, the risk either teleport in my first example ("Get the demon hunter!") fails would of course typically not be more than about 6% to 9%, and those in my second example ("Save the royal family!") about 3% to 9% (depending on circumstances and whether the second teleport is even needed). I'd say those are pretty great odds of success in comparison to those of other adventurers' shenanigans...

Meanwhile, humble Expert (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/expert.htm) may get the job done via several successful skill checks (which are way easier to ensure for a dedicated character)Uh... Skill checks lets you teleport now? How do you do that, beat a DC 100 Tumble? Or if you happen to have a scroll of teleport, how do you minimize the risks in a more efficient and timely manner than say arcane eye, scry or a combination of the two or similar?

[Ignimortis]

Then you're not really arguing with the principle. We could quibble about whether the distinction between Warrior and Fighter is worth making, but ultimately there's nothing wrong with having multiple levels of enemy complexity, and whether you have one level bellow PC-strength or two is ultimately not especially important. The problem is with having dramatically and intentionally imbalanced PC classes, because those classes do need to be balanced.



I don't really understand why this is responsive to the thing you're quoting, rather than being an extension of the previous point, but whatever. In any case, why wouldn't you want people with the same fighting style to be mechanically similar? And yes, you do want some difference between characters, but again, that can be accomplished with balanced classes.



Again, I get that. But why would you want to do that? What do we get by having a Warmage that is just kinda worse than the Wizard? Wouldn't the game be better if the Warmage had enough logistics magic and buff spells to be competitive with the Wizard?


Because in doing things the way you suggest, I can't preserve 3.5's breadth. It would be a different game in some way, infinitely better balanced and well-designed - for a certain style of game. We can elevate all classes to Wizard's balance point and run a game like that, and we can also lower everyone to Fighters and run a game like that. However, if someone would design for those things from the ground up, those would be very different games in mechanics. Even basic mechanics, I think. So if you would retain 3.5 as a game which has the design space broad enough to have both Fighter balance point and Wizard balance point in it, then you should have classes like Warblade which are "Fighters that are close to Wizards" and Warmage, which are "Wizards that are close to Fighters".

[MeimuHakurei]

Because in doing things the way you suggest, I can't preserve 3.5's breadth. It would be a different game in some way, infinitely better balanced and well-designed - for a certain style of game. We can elevate all classes to Wizard's balance point and run a game like that, and we can also lower everyone to Fighters and run a game like that. However, if someone would design for those things from the ground up, those would be very different games in mechanics. Even basic mechanics, I think. So if you would retain 3.5 as a game which has the design space broad enough to have both Fighter balance point and Wizard balance point in it, then you should have classes like Warblade which are "Fighters that are close to Wizards" and Warmage, which are "Wizards that are close to Fighters".

Any reason you can't run gritty Fighter-style games at Levels 3-5 and run over the top Wizard-style games at Levels 16-18 in a balanced 3.5 D&D?

[ryu]

Any reason you can't run gritty Fighter-style games at Levels 3-5 and run over the top Wizard-style games at Levels 16-18 in a balanced 3.5 D&D?

That would be effort, and denies the primal human urge to see numbers go up. I cannot oversell the importance of the primal human urge to see numbers go up. People like to think they aren't subject to it. The popularity of idle games blows away that notion.

[ShurikVch]

'Course. But it's not exactly Russian roulette, more like "darn problematic". And often, you can minimize that risk significantly. For example, the risk either teleport in my first example ("Get the demon hunter!") fails would of course typically not be more than about 6% to 9%, and those in my second example ("Save the royal family!") about 3% to 9% (depending on circumstances and whether the second teleport is even needed). I'd say those are pretty great odds of success in comparison to those of other adventurers' shenanigans...If I understood your example correctly, location of the Demonhunter should count as “False destination” (Sorcerer never seen it!) - thus, 70% chance to fail.
And then they need also go back, which is much easier, but still not 100% ensured

Uh... Skill checks lets you teleport now? How do you do that, beat a DC 100 Tumble? Or if you happen to have a scroll of teleport, how do you minimize the risks in a more efficient and timely manner than say arcane eye, scry or a combination of the two or similar?Skill checks in Hide, Move Silently, Disguise, Intimidate, Bluff, or Diplomacy - it's about the #2
And for #1 - Teleport by itself isn't the most important thing there - scroll is.
Replace it with a scroll of Planar Binding to call in Astral Deva; or Dismissal, which may just remove the demon altogether - as we can see, Teleport is underperforming there: not just it have chance to fail, but also need a second casting...

[Quertus]

So, IME, the huge imbalance in 3e is great for game balance.

Hear me out.

So, sure, there's the fact that we can point little Timmy towards the Warblade (or whatever the good muggle class is), while Tippy plays a Warrior in order to make the table balanced. That's the part I usually discuss and advocate.

But there also the fact that it makes balance obviously an issue.

Quite contrary to the poster who... we'll say claimed that people would cry "imbalance" if the only stats were aesthetic, players of older editions / other more balanced games had, IME, much less of an awareness of game balance. They much less frequently could articulate what they didn't like about a given table / game / system.

By making imbalance so huge, 3e has facilitates that conversation, and made tables capable of being more balanced.

And, IMO, if the group cares about balance (which is not a requirement for fun), then it is on the group, not just the GM, to make that happen. There is no real extra workload for the GM.


D&D 3.5 is accidentally the closest to flawless tabletop experience that has ever existed.

While I could spend pages disagreeing with most of what you've said, that probably won't be of value to either of us, or anyone else reading this thread. But I think that this bit here could prove interesting.

What makes you say this? What, to your mind, is the superlative value of the 3e experience?

(For reference, I ask as someone who likes 3e, but prefers 2e. So, for example, you don't have to convince me that the 3e experience is good, just why you consider it best.)


1) You're not really enabling any success for skilled users. Even if you can't build dumb, you can still play dumb, and in a well-designed system e.g. encounter design should provide enough hooks to correct for expect imbalance.

2) What the pro-imbalance people are saying is that we should make the hardest job at the table even harder. That's absurd.

Numbered for convenience.

1) while I don't personally disagree (as is obvious by some of my characters (cough Quertus cough)), there are Playgrounders who have voiced the belief that many people just won't play dumb for balance. :smallfrown:

2) no, I'm advocating offloading the responsibility game balance to the players, and I always have.

I agree with you that it's absurd to have the GM balance the game.


But people choose whatever character and class that they feel comfortable playing. To me I play whatever character and class by any tier. Weak, Strong, Average. I really don't care. As long that I'm having fun playing with the character that all it matters. :smile:

+1 this.

[Ignimortis]

Any reason you can't run gritty Fighter-style games at Levels 3-5 and run over the top Wizard-style games at Levels 16-18 in a balanced 3.5 D&D?

Like Ryu said, you'd have a very limited play space available. Imagine running a year-long campaign and only getting to level up three times? You'd need more levels or a way for campaigns to overlap somewhat - if Fighter games begin at 1st level and end at 10th level, Beguiler games run through 5 to 15, and Wizard games are 10 to 20, then it's somewhat more possible. But this probably creates a whole different system, where you can upgrade your Fighter to Super Fighter at level 11, taking a level in a much better class that puts you on a rather even level with Wizards, if you want to keep playing.

[ryu]

As I've already stated, a good tabletop game creates a positive experience irreplaceable by other means. certainly not easier, faster, or better.

No other game, video or otherwise has successfully replicated proper tier 1 play. None of the glorious information proxy wars, or wildly different attack/defense methods, or ability completely alter every facet of the battle in a single move any dozen numbers of ways.

A good tabletop game is worth putting up with all the nonsense. The scheduling, pen stocking, mat placement, screens, paper fiddling, lost dice, dribbled pizza grease cleaning, and so on.

If I wanted to walk up and hit things with simple tactics and rock paper scissors dependent strengths and weaknesses I'd play fire emblem.

I WISH I COULD wizard, really wizard not fake wizard, without dealing with that, but I can't.

[MeimuHakurei]

I haven't actually mentioned the biggest issue I have with the way the game handles class imbalances: It forces me to play classes with fluff and attached mechanics that I absolutely detest just so my power level is high/low enough for me to get into the game. The Wizard class is my biggest issue; as much as I actually kinda like the spell slot mechanic, appraising my spells I get against one another as well as the breadth of options for a specialist, I don't want to have the "scours lost tombs for new spells" and "needs to carry books on them to function at virtually all times" tropes forced onto me every time I want to have a magic-focused character with good options available. Likewise, I enjoy playing unarmed combatants (particularly the big bruiser types) but the game's choices for this combat style are excessively narrow and generally favor more lithe, agile martial artists. That or I just polymorph into some kind of monster, which isn't always what I want either.

There's also the problem that many flavorful concepts and interesting class playstyles are locked into the higher levels and there isn't a way to begin doing that from Level 1.

[ryu]

I haven't actually mentioned the biggest issue I have with the way the game handles class imbalances: It forces me to play classes with fluff and attached mechanics that I absolutely detest just so my power level is high/low enough for me to get into the game. The Wizard class is my biggest issue; as much as I actually kinda like the spell slot mechanic, appraising my spells I get against one another as well as the breadth of options for a specialist, I don't want to have the "scours lost tombs for new spells" and "needs to carry books on them to function at virtually all times" tropes forced onto me every time I want to have a magic-focused character with good options available. Likewise, I enjoy playing unarmed combatants (particularly the big bruiser types) but the game's choices for this combat style are excessively narrow and generally favor more lithe, agile martial artists. That or I just polymorph into some kind of monster, which isn't always what I want either.

There's also the problem that many flavorful concepts and interesting class playstyles are locked into the higher levels and there isn't a way to begin doing that from Level 1.

Google easy bake wizard. It's a simple method of building designed specifically to passive-aggressively counter DMs who'll passive-aggressively limit spell getting opportunities, attack spell component pouches, and steal spellbooks.

Spell selection and lack of books out of EVERY ORIFICE.

Edit: In fact HERE. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325933-Easy-Bake-Wizard-Handbook)

[Hackulator]

I haven't actually mentioned the biggest issue I have with the way the game handles class imbalances: It forces me to play classes with fluff and attached mechanics that I absolutely detest just so my power level is high/low enough for me to get into the game. The Wizard class is my biggest issue; as much as I actually kinda like the spell slot mechanic, appraising my spells I get against one another as well as the breadth of options for a specialist, I don't want to have the "scours lost tombs for new spells" and "needs to carry books on them to function at virtually all times" tropes forced onto me every time I want to have a magic-focused character with good options available. Likewise, I enjoy playing unarmed combatants (particularly the big bruiser types) but the game's choices for this combat style are excessively narrow and generally favor more lithe, agile martial artists. That or I just polymorph into some kind of monster, which isn't always what I want either.

There's also the problem that many flavorful concepts and interesting class playstyles are locked into the higher levels and there isn't a way to begin doing that from Level 1.

I mean, you can play a cleric, druid, or sorcerer to be a magic focused character who doesn't need spellbooks.

As for there not being options for big bruisers, there's dungeoncrashers, the combat brute or shocktrooper feats as well as various other feats that fulfill that particularly character fantasy, as well as various prestige classes like hulking hurler, war hulk, frenzied berserker and others. Making them unarmed can be done in various ways, from taking some form of improved unarmed strike to playing a monster with a slam or claw attack.


Google easy bake wizard. It's a simple method of building designed specifically to passive-aggressively counter DMs who'll passive-aggressively limit spell getting opportunities, attack spell component pouches, and steal spellbooks.

Spell selection and lack of books out of EVERY ORIFICE.

Edit: In fact HERE. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325933-Easy-Bake-Wizard-Handbook)

This is the sort of attitude in people who play wizards that makes them problems: the idea that using one of the most basic ways of limiting a wizard's power, ie not making spells always available everywhere to get, is somehow a problematic thing and an example of the DM being "passive-aggressive".

[ryu]

Not just that. All of those things together. And constant nighttime ambushes. And grapplers EVERYWHERE. Silence all over the place. That's passive aggressive put KINDLY.

[Hackulator]

Not just that. All of those things together. And constant nighttime ambushes. And grapplers EVERYWHERE. Silence all over the place. That's passive aggressive put KINDLY.

In a world where spellcasters were a common problem, the only reason stuff like that wouldn't be common is that your DM is being nice to you.

[ryu]

In a world where spellcasters were a common problem, the only reason stuff like that wouldn't be common is that your DM is being nice to you.

Literally every encounter? No.

[Hackulator]

Literally every encounter? No.

Well if anything is present in every encounter it's generally bad DMing.

[ryu]

Well if anything is present in every encounter it's generally bad DMing.

You mean like I was saying originally? The thing you called me a problem player for stating as a reason to bring that set?

[Hackulator]

Google easy bake wizard. It's a simple method of building designed specifically to passive-aggressively counter DMs who'll passive-aggressively limit spell getting opportunities, attack spell component pouches, and steal spellbooks.

Spell selection and lack of books out of EVERY ORIFICE.

Edit: In fact HERE. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325933-Easy-Bake-Wizard-Handbook)


You mean like I was saying originally? The thing you called me a problem player for stating as a reason to bring that set?

See the above quote of you to remind you what you actually said originally that I responded too. You didn't mention anything happening in every encounter, you referred to a DM limiting your options to get spells or trying to actively deal with your casting as being passive-aggressive with the clear implication it was bad.

[ryu]

See the above quote of you to remind you what you actually said originally that I responded too. You didn't mention anything happening in every encounter, you referred to a DM limiting your options to get spells or trying to actively deal with your casting as being passive-aggressive with the clear implication it was bad.

The implication was that it was only the beginning. I thought every man woman and child on this forum knew the stories. If by being here a while if nothing else. Just like everyone knows the attempts to call monks the strongest meme.

[upho]

1) call the GM an incompetent fool.

2) Agreed. But then I hope you also realize that it's both unfair and frankly mean to demand players to counter balance issues by playing brilliant or inept characters, especially in a game like 3.5 where simply realizing whether you ought to do one or the other requires quite a bit of system mastery.

3) But I do also really think you should be a lot more careful in making sweeping assumptions about the game in general, or about the preferences of those who play it, based on your own "demonstrations". Your potted plant PC doesn't say anything about the game at all beside the fact that you can play as a potted plant. It does however say things about you and your games specifically. So merely using that term - "demonstration" - is not only grossly misleading, but more importantly risks invalidating any of your associated points, even those that are actually good.

4) Sorry, but are you actually saying your "ultimate demonstration" is that surprising to most people? If so, that is weird, indeed.

5) Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, (mass) charm person, dominate person, detect thoughts, certain bardic performances, several illusion spells, do I really need to go on?

Diplomacy check and/or most likely some application of a high Bluff, Sense Motive and/or Intimidate check result, charm person, detect thoughts, suggestion and several divination spells. Now I'll grant you that since this is very much an intra-party "challenge", it's already by default largely limited to RP rather than mechanics (and many of my suggestions may not be very nice and especially the use of Diplomacy between PCs is iffy also per RAW, to say the least). And while my group would most likely have a similar kind of IC discussion if facing a similar problem,

5b) it's worth keeping in mind that there seem to be plenty of groups which would either never even consider the idea that a PC maybe should give their inherited staff to another. Not to mention plenty of groups who would simply agree giving the staffs to the noobs would be optimal in less than 30 seconds OoC before the session has even started.

6) Not really valid, consider this was based on GM fiat from pretty much start to end.

6) And that's the far most important detail, and unfortunately it invalidates the entire purpose of mentioning this example in this context. There's simply very little in there to help us determine whether the game's imbalance causes serious problems and/or grants significant benefits.

Numbered for convenience (and, yes, there are two #6)

1) that's not what I was doing.

2) sigh. "GM grog think game no work right, krag do to much. Grog pull out nerf bat on krag" doesn't seem to require much brainpower or understanding of the game. Neither does toning down your character when you realize that you're OP by sharing the spotlight or whatever. Quertus and Armus just represent engineered balance (OK, Quertus was purely accidental, he was engineered psychology that happened to be fun and balanced), demonstrating that it is possible - yes, with system mastery and knowledge of the group - to engineer such things without requiring epimethian fixes.

3) ? So, how is "demonstration" the wrong word?

4) well, much like I never met a 2e group that didn't try to "correct" me when I ran Amalak, and said that my AC was 11 (which was worse than 10), it sure seems to surprise many people that balance and fun are not synonyms.

5) well, an awful lot if that isn't spells, doesn't work on PCs, and/or will have bad consequences down the road. About the only one that would have helped at any of my tables was Detect Thoughts, and it wouldn't have had the desired effect for either scene at this particular table.

Oh, wait, you notice Detect Thoughts in 3e. Never mind. They all would have been worse than what Armus did. So I reject your examples that spells could have done it "better".

5b) absolutely. This was quite the gamble, and wouldn't have worked (or wouldn't have been necessary) at many tables. Which transitions into #6 nicely.

6) Narrative power isn't Magic Missile, it isn't "push button, get effect", it isn't science. It's swinging a sword, it's hoping things work as intended, it's art.

Narrative power is inherently subject to GM (or other player) whim. That doesn't invalidate it, that's the point.

I choose not to slaughter all the goblin children. I don't know what effect that will have. But that's narrative power, at least under a good GM.1. To clarify: No you didn't, I said you'd be "right or at least less wrong" to do so, "you" in this case mostly referring to anyone rather than "you who post on GitP under the user name 'Quertus'". It was mostly to make it abundantly clear that I fully agree that things like a GM "demanding that no solution but the McGuffin will possibly work" isn't much of a reason for claiming teleport (or any other player option) is powerful, and that my examples were written under the assumption that the hypothetical games where they took place in weren't run by an incompetent fool of a GM. And this again touches upon the very reason why teleport has such great narrative power, as it enables a PCs to, you know, "direct the narrative" in directions/manners which would often be less viable or flat out impossible without the spell.

2. In my eyes, the main issue here is that you seem to assume a pretty darn high level of system mastery, including prior knowledge that the game even can produce OP PCs, not to mention that it's likely to do so. There are tons of examples on this forum alone which will tell you that this isn't any kind of norm or average, with groups/GMs who don't nerf when they should or who nerf the wrong things for the wrong reasons. More importantly, it's quite a different thing to realize that a PC is OP after the fact than it is to correctly identify which option(s) in an OP character is mostly to blame, not to mention to read options X, Y and Z and understand that combining them will result in an OP character. It's also often difficult/problematic to significantly alter your PCs personality once you've realized you're no longer on par with the rest of the group/game, as that realization typically happens only several levels in.

On top of this, the "compensate through player skill/PC personality" method is often not even a viable option for a less skilled player, or in the case of a more seriously mechanically UP character. For example, despite fantastic player skills, AFAICT Armus would be so UP in comparison to the other PCs in my current "long-haul" PF campaign it's most unlikely he'd make it past his first couple of combat encounters, and he'd be useless or even detrimental in most situations which involve game mechanics intended to challenge the other party members. That is of course unless I either turned the mechanical aspects of challenges into complete jokes for the rest of the party, or made so many and all-encompassing house rules exclusively for Armus you'd effectively be playing a completely different game than the other players. And note that a) this is a game which I strongly suspect would in all other respects suit you and go very well with your "Armus play style", and b) the other PCs aren't anywhere near "high-op wizard" levels of mechanical power, but simply well played (in all respects) and well-built PCs based on what I'd call "mid-power" classes (alchemist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/), nerfed witch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/), warder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/path-of-war/classes/warder/), magus (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/) and bloodrager (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/bloodrager/)).

3. At least in the context of this discussion, a "demonstration" implies a generally applicable solution or concept. But your potted plant PC is an extremely niche concept with virtually zero general applicability, especially in the context of the combat-focused and mechanics-heavy game that 3.5/PF is and this particular discussion. In other words, it doesn't demonstrate anything outside that specific game or your personal experiences of playing in that game.

4. I think I understand. But AFAICT, this discussion isn't about whether balance is a necessity for fun (which I'd find a rather inane question not really worth anyone's time). More importantly, AFAIK nobody in this thread has claimed a game with poor mechanical balance between PCs cannot possibly be fun. So what I'm saying is simply that you should be careful not to put words in other persons' mouths, especially if you find those words make little sense and/or to be full of hyperbole. Better to ask instead whether your interpretation is correct before jumping to conclusions with a straw-man which frames the other party as some kind of idiot.

5. Think "spells = specific action regulated by specific rules", as spells per se are of course not necessary to prove my point, just any kind of game mechanic applicable to the situation. But again, yes, the party discussion is indeed an example of a situation in which most mechanics would actually be problematic. But then one also can't help but wonder how much "narrative power" the ability to solve such issues between PCs provides in most games. I'd guess "near zero", unfortunately (which is far, far less than what I'd prefer myself in most games).

6. I don't really disagree here (with the exception of Magic Missile, but the narrative power there is typically near non-existent, relatively speaking, so whatever). What I find absurd is the claim that narrative power cannot come from any action or ability written on a PC's character sheet. To me, that is to claim that a party of PCs that are, say, stationary disembodied voices and auditory senses with a life-span of a few years and no further mechanical abilities whatsoever, would be able to get through most published adventures just fine when run as written by a reasonably "good GM".

In addition, there are thousands of "push button, get effect" options and combos of options available to PCs which grant very substantial narrative power. The most extreme such "buttons" could even grant "effects" with narrative power enough to utterly and completely and instantly end or radically alter not just the main story but also the entire setting. If you claim this isn't narrative power, you also claim say Pun-Pun would have no greater narrative power than any other 1st level PC in most games, despite the fact that Pun-Pun's "buttons" make him literally infinitely more powerful than anyone or -thing in existence, and despite the fact that the kind of "player skill" you refer to becomes completely redundant and irrelevant as soon as the game starts.


The GM who absolutely required the McGuffin and who nearly ruined one of my favorite characters? He believed in the "law of unintended consequences" (which is fine), but did not believe in the "law of intended consequences". So much so that I listed it as a "major accomplishment" when one of my character's actions actually had the intended* effect. He was not amused.

* Which only worked because that didn't look like what he intended to happen.Ugh... :smallyuk: Yeah, seems to be the kind of "incompetent fool" of a GM you made me think of, except it appears this guy also had an almost narcissistic streak to his OCD-style, and wouldn't be able to excuse his poor GM-ing with inexperience. (And I do believe inexperience is a perfectly valid excuse for GM-ing like an incompetent fool in most cases.)

I'm relieved to hear you've found a good GM. Honestly, the very existence of bad and especially of mean GMs bothers me more than it probably should, but they can ruin a potentially fantastic experience and truly meaningful hobby for so many.

[VoltsofEight]

Literally every encounter? No.

But why wouldn't it? In a high-magic world why wouldn't every 2-bit bandit and slaver both expect magic and prepare ways to dispel and negate the magic of their potential victims? Why wouldn't any wild monster that evolved/was created to not just exist but to be an actual threat to the world's inhabitants have extremely potent anti-magic fields to eat the squishy magic using prey? Why wouldn't any long forgotten demons or ancient dragons not just know the value of stopping their opponents magic but also making sure their spells their spells stick?

The answer is that it sucks for the players to build their characters around a mechanic and then have that mechanic contested 90% of the time and succeeds about 50%(which sounds familiar...)?

[Cosi]

But people choose whatever character and class that they feel comfortable playing. To me I play whatever character and class by any tier. Weak, Strong, Average. I really don't care. As long that I'm having fun playing with the character that all it matters. :smile:

Well, that seems inconsistent with your previous comments on Tier One classes. And in any case, being indifferent to power doesn't mean a preference for imbalance. It means a lack of preference either way. And that's fine. But it's different from wanting some classes to be stronger than others.


Because in doing things the way you suggest, I can't preserve 3.5's breadth.

Why on earth not? What do you lose -- aside from imbalance itself -- by making things balanced? You wouldn't have to lose the ability to have multiple resource management systems (as the Warblade, Binder, Warlock, and Totemist demonstrate), you wouldn't lose the ability to have a wide variety of options or have abilities that impact the plot (as the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid demonstrate), and you wouldn't have to lose the ability to have characters at a variety of different levels of complexity (as the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Beguiler demonstrate). So what breadth are we supposed to be losing?


Any reason you can't run gritty Fighter-style games at Levels 3-5 and run over the top Wizard-style games at Levels 16-18 in a balanced 3.5 D&D?

No, there's no reason you can't do that.


That would be effort, and denies the primal human urge to see numbers go up. I cannot oversell the importance of the primal human urge to see numbers go up. People like to think they aren't subject to it. The popularity of idle games blows away that notion.

Your numbers are still going up. Yes, they don't go up to twenty, but frankly you can't stretch "mundane warrior" out over twenty levels even if you wanted to. There are just not twenty gradations of power between anything resembling an acceptable starting character and Conan that you care about. Look at something like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Do you honestly think there's twenty levels of game there?


Quite contrary to the poster who... we'll say claimed that people would cry "imbalance" if the only stats were aesthetic, players of older editions / other more balanced games had, IME, much less of an awareness of game balance. They much less frequently could articulate what they didn't like about a given table / game / system.

By making imbalance so huge, 3e has facilitates that conversation, and made tables capable of being more balanced.

I think this has more to do with 3e coinciding with the internet boom. 3e simply saw dramatically more analysis than any prior edition of the game did. I don't really think the earlier games were more balanced, or less analyzed, or any of that. It's just that the analysis wasn't signal-boosted to the entire world.


Not just that. All of those things together. And constant nighttime ambushes. And grapplers EVERYWHERE. Silence all over the place. That's passive aggressive put KINDLY.

To expand on this, the thing I object to is the idea that every encounter will include things that screw over Wizards and provide opportunities for Fighters to shine, and the reverse will never happen, and the fact that this happens reflects absolutely nothing about the relative power of the classes. It's like how Calthropsu will go "but what if there's an ambush by exactly whatever the Wizard's spells don't cover" as if that was an argument against the power of the Wizard, but will never consider "what if the Fighter has to do anything at all that effects anything else in the world in any meaningful way" as an argument against the Fighter.

Yes, you can find encounters that screw the Wizard. But you can find encounters that screw everyone, so that's not important. When evaluated against a reasonably representative sample of encounters -- which is the fair standard by which to evaluate -- the Wizard has a substantially higher expected performance than the Fighter.

[Mechalich]

I think this has more to do with 3e coinciding with the internet boom. 3e simply saw dramatically more analysis than any prior edition of the game did. I don't really think the earlier games were more balanced, or less analyzed, or any of that. It's just that the analysis wasn't signal-boosted to the entire world.

While the internet certainly contributed, I actually think it has more to do with how 3e - by implementing a skills system - expanded the use of rules to a much larger portion of the play space. In 2e AD&D, you generally don't make any roles during social interactions unless you try to pick someone's pocket. Everything is purely freeform. In 3e this is no longer true. For example, compare conversation prompts in BGII versus PF: Kingmaker. In BGII there are no roles or skill checks in conversation, you just make text choices. In PF: Kingmaker, you make Diplomacy, Bluff, and Knowledge checks in conversation all the time, and they have a dramatic impact on the gameplay.

In 2e a fighter could be, and in fact was actually encouraged to be, the party face (because the Fighter was part of the noble hierarchy that presumably ruled the quasi-medieval setting and the wizard was not). In 3e this is no longer possible, and the Fighter, and also the Barbarian, Paladin, and some other classes, has little to do but stand around staring at the wall when not hitting things with a big sword, and this is a problem because you're probably only in combat for 33-66% of the time anyway.

[Jack_Simth]

Why on earth not? What do you lose -- aside from imbalance itself -- by making things balanced? You wouldn't have to lose the ability to have multiple resource management systems (as the Warblade, Binder, Warlock, and Totemist demonstrate), you wouldn't lose the ability to have a wide variety of options or have abilities that impact the plot (as the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid demonstrate), and you wouldn't have to lose the ability to have characters at a variety of different levels of complexity (as the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Beguiler demonstrate). So what breadth are we supposed to be losing?You're making an assumption; namely: Balance can be achieved while still permitting "high fantasy casters" and "mundanes" in the same game.

This assumption might be valid... or it might not. The only real way to check would be to try it... can you balance the "high fantasy casters" with the "mundanes" without doing either of two things:
1) Scrapping the massive number of options present to the "high fantasy casters" (e.g., removing many individual spells).
2) Beefing up what's available to the "mundanes" to the point where the term no longer applies.

The reason for those two restrictions:
If you scrap individual spells, you're removing options, which inherently removes some of the breadth of the system.
If you file the serial numbers off of a caster class and call it "mundane", you've effectively removed the option for a non-magical class, and forced the "mundanes" into the realm of anime and wuxia. That's great for folks who like those sorts of fantasy, but it removes some breadth from the game and removes the option of playing an essentially mundane character.

If you violate either restriction in your attempt at balance, you've removed breadth from the game.

[Doctor Awkward]

While the internet certainly contributed, I actually think it has more to do with how 3e - by implementing a skills system - expanded the use of rules to a much larger portion of the play space. In 2e AD&D, you generally don't make any roles during social interactions unless you try to pick someone's pocket. Everything is purely freeform. In 3e this is no longer true. For example, compare conversation prompts in BGII versus PF: Kingmaker. In BGII there are no roles or skill checks in conversation, you just make text choices. In PF: Kingmaker, you make Diplomacy, Bluff, and Knowledge checks in conversation all the time, and they have a dramatic impact on the gameplay.

In 2e a fighter could be, and in fact was actually encouraged to be, the party face (because the Fighter was part of the noble hierarchy that presumably ruled the quasi-medieval setting and the wizard was not). In 3e this is no longer possible, and the Fighter, and also the Barbarian, Paladin, and some other classes, has little to do but stand around staring at the wall when not hitting things with a big sword, and this is a problem because you're probably only in combat for 33-66% of the time anyway.

I argued much the same point in a different thread.

In the OG D&D, the only class to have anything to roll in non-combat situations was the thief, who had a list of skills that only they could do: open locks, pick pockets, move silently, hide in the shadows, and disarm traps. They had a pool of points to distribute to these skills and success was determined by rolling under your total score in the skill on a percentage die. 2E gave them a few more skills (I recall Detect Illusions being a huge one), and a couple of the class kits added some more.

Then the 2e rules added an optional sub-system called "non-weapon proficiencies". The way it worked was each class had a fixed number of NWP points to spend on ranks in a given pool of abilities ranging from Pottery, to Carriage Driver, to Ventriloquism, to Falconry, and so on. You could purchase proficiencies from outside of your class's pool, but each rank would cost you two specialty points instead of one. The system was a pain to implement because a) Each NWP had an associated ability score and duplicated the roll-under mechanic on a d20 to determine success which made it awkward to use alongside the rest of the game, b) You had a limited number of points to spend and the vast majority of the choices were far too narrow to be worthwhile, and c) the checks themselves were annoying to make. Contested checks were subject to a bizarre "roll well but not too well" mechanic, the difficulties for each task were too "hard-coded" to your ability scores (so a character with high ability scores and minimal training had a far better chance of succeeding than a character with average scores and extensive training), and there were very, very few methods of boosting your check. As a result, most tables simply did without them and improv-acted all social situations.

3rd Edition attempted to rectify this issue by splitting NWP's into both skills and feats, and allowing chance to adjudicate the outcome of a social situation rather than the player's actual abilities.

[upho]

I would love to see the breakdown of what parts of my stories lead you to conclude each of these. :smallamused::smallbiggrin: I'm gonna have to admit I was being at least 50% facetious here. I just couldn't resist.

The remaining 50% was simply saying the game actually has rules for most of what makes a character "a prodigy" with "an unparalleled education". Meaning those qualities typically have substantial mechanical implications, if not requirements. If Armus actually didn't have those abilities per the rules, in the game world there would also be little to no reason to call him a "a prodigy", and arguably even less reason to say he had "an unparalleled education".*

But most importantly, I was 100% hinting at the greatest problem I see with claiming that "button power" has no "narrative power". For example, AFAICT you yourself claim the reason Quertus wasn't OP is because you played him as tactically inept, and the reason Armus actually was OP instead of UP is because you played him like a prodigy and tactical genius. But wouldn't you say both characters clearly affected the narrative? And if you imagine that Quertus had been played as "optimized" as you played Armus, or that Armus had been armed with the same mechanical power as Quertus, both using those god-like wizard button powers to their fullest extent and as effectively as possible, wouldn't you say they both likely would've had a significantly greater impact on the narrative than they actually had?

*As a side note, I have a lot of understanding for people who find it annoying that 3.5/PF typically demands such significant portion of a character's qualities are reflected in actual mechanics, especially since it's a class-based system. Which frequently means a player must have plenty of nerdy system-specific knowledge before being able to accurately capture a certain character concept in mechanics that are also reasonably balanced for their game.


Out of the 14 there? Maybe two, if they cared (neither ever showed any such interest, so I'm just guessing). Three, I imagine, if my brother had been there for that campaign.So at the very most two or three out of no less than 14 players more experienced than you. Which seems to be about similar to my own experiences, which basically boils down to the "balance through player skill"-method being difficult for both for the GM and most players to apply in practice. Which isn't strange, considering a large part of the reason the rules to exist in the first place is to allow for a PC's skill to replace the player's skill and the GM's need to constantly balance the skills of the players through adjustments in the game. That said, I certainly agree that player skill often has - and should have - the greatest impact on a PC's ability to ultimately achieve their goals.

(Judging by your descriptions of the other PCs' "tactics", I have to say it also appears Armus didn't have to be much of an actual tactical genius in order to appear as one next to his PC companions...)


False... Octotomy?:smalltongue: Darn, you're absolutely correct! The options weren't supposed to be mutually exclusive, so I intended to say basically: "Which of the following applied (if any)?"

False octotomy... I love it!

Hmm... Wonder if this means I've set some kind of new record here on GitP... :smallredface:


So, the GM never really explained it, but, from what I've inferred, the closest was "c", except that it was supposed to be part of the plot.And this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I don't know how many published 7th level drow priestesses you've looked at, but I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to hear that they'd typically barely register killing a 1st level PC as anything but the most minor speed-bump, while the probability that the poor PC manages to kill the priestess is likely lower than 0.01% in a very large majority of situations. Actually, even should we assume the PC is played by a verified tactical genius who only rolls natural 20's, I'd surely put my money on the priestess. The PC would need some ridiculously massive circumstantial advantages for this to not be true (the PC wins initiate/gets a surprise round and has some kind of super-weapon far outside WBL which the priestess is unaware of, maybe?).

Which, again, takes us back to the fact that if you play a game from 1st - 20th at least roughly according to RAW, there are typically a huge number of events where player skill won't be nearly enough to affect the narrative in the direction the PC (or player) would prefer. The least "mechanical" decisions and actions a PC/player can take typically only lets a PC get to a certain point, and thereafter the PC needs "buttons" powerful enough to actually accomplish what they intended to.


EDIT: definitely not "D", in fact the exact opposite (which was part of the point of the character, to be as mechanically weak as I could make him). And where did you get "but you're not very good at any similar kind of tabletop combat"? :smallconfused:From you, saying you're a mediocre WH player IIRC? (I would've had plenty of reason to believe otherwise if you hadn't said so.)


* Narrative power is the ability to shape the flow of events, through the actions and choices of the character.

* "Power" power is the statistical attributes of the character.Phew! This is thankfully pretty much exactly what I believed you would say, so at least it seems you've been clear enough and I haven't misinterpreted anything you've said so far. Unfortunately, I can't see how those definitions will be anywhere near applicable enough to matter though. But sure, let's give it try with something far less clear-cut and far more common IME, like say a situation I believe was discussed in the "Extraction from the Necromancer" thread you started:

A party has to get through a large dungeon complex full of patrolling zombies in order to save a girl from being sacrificed by the evil necromancer. The party wizard casts an illusion of a wall in one of the rooms, allowing the party to safely pass several mindless zombies without having to worry about being attacked.


1. Did the wizard (player) shape the flow of events by choosing to cast the spell and then doing so? - I'd say yes, most definitely. For example, the action obviously meant avoiding the event "dangerous combat with zombies" which otherwise most likely would've occurred. So this was obviously a display of "narrative power".

2. Did the wizard (player) "push a button" in order to shape the event? - Yes, the wizard (player) used a clearly defined mechanical ability ("a statistical attribute") available to the wizard PC in order to avoid the event "dangerous combat with zombies" which otherwise most likely would've occurred. So this was obviously a display of "button power" (or "power" power).

Besides the problem of your button power definition not actually saying what it achieves while your narrative power definition does, do you see where the actual concepts are bound to get confusing, pretty much regardless of the specific wording of the definitions? And AFAICT, as long as you keep either one or both of the following aims for the definitions, this problem will remain:


1. "Narrative power" should be defined as something which exists without mechanical "button power".

2. "Button power" should be defined as something which doesn't grant "narrative power".

So unless you ditch these aims, a far more accurate name for "narrative power" in most 3.5/PF games would be "next to meaningless power". Or arguably even "totally meaningless power", as even in the example of Armus having the staffs shift owners resulted in a shift in the respective PCs' button power. Would I be correct if I guessed that shift of button power was also the primary reason why Armus made an effort to convince the PC to lend their staff in the first place?

------

My "backwards" definitions would instead define two power types as inclusive sources of power with which a player can affect the narrative (= the events in the game world). Which makes a whole lot more sense IMO:


1. "Player Skill" (PS) is the relative degree to which the player can affect the narrative through the PCs actions.

2. "Button Power" (BP) is the relative degree to which the PC's mechanical abilities and statistics can affect the narrative.

A few interesting ideas/facts which support the above "sources of power" definitions:

A. Every action taken by a PC needs some measure, however minuscule, of both PS and BP in order to affect the narrative at all.
B. The relative amounts of PS versus BP required to affect the narrative in a certain direction may vary greatly, and both have varying low and high thresholds depending on the situation.
C. PS may compensate for BP to a certain extent, and vice versa. Hence, a PC with both high PS and high BP is likely to be deemed as OP in many games.

Does my "backwards" way of thinking make more sense to you now?


* I base this on my experience learning about databases (which I love), but my initial impression was that they talk backwards. Seriously, people have shirts, and shirts have buttons. But ask a database, and buttons have shirts, and shirts have people.Ha ha! Not a developer myself, but that pretty much sums up my own impression of SQL.


Are you really contending that the potted plant is more powerful than Thor by your definition of "power"?In that particular situation at that particular moment? Certainly not. Thor's clearly a powerless petunia and Quertus Quesnelia a god. :smalltongue:

But of course, in virtually every other situation and moment either of them interacted with the game world, I'm fairly certain it was exactly the opposite...

Also, note that Quertus Quesnelia is in fact not completely lacking in button power, since he (it?) obviously has some kind of game statistics and mechanics allowing him to be carried, perceive his surroundings in some manner (I assume), and to communicate with his friend Thor. Without this button power, however minimal, he wouldn't have had any power even in that situation.


If so, please define "power".Sure, how 'bout: "The relative degree to which something is able to affect reality in a certain manner." In the context of PCs in a 3.5/PF game, that would translate into, say:

"The relative degree to which a player is able to affect the narrative through their PC according to their wishes."

Does that help?

[Cosi]

You're making an assumption; namely: Balance can be achieved while still permitting "high fantasy casters" and "mundanes" in the same game.

I'm not assuming that, it's true. Warblades are balanced with Warlocks. Balancing casters and martials is not impossible. Wizards are balanced with Druids. Balancing characters with abilities that impact the plot is not impossible. The burden of proof is very much on the people who think balance is impossible to demonstrate that you can't do both of those things at once.

And, yes, you said "mundanes", but that's irrelevant for a host of reasons. Most pressingly, there are certainly going to be some levels where characters are mundane in practice. But it's also true that even nominally-mundane classes like the Fighter aren't in practice once you get to high levels, and that there simply aren't twenty gradations of power within mundanity (seriously, try to come up with a list of twenty different characters where the strongest is "Conan" and tell me you'd be satisfied with that progression).

[Darth Ultron]

You're making an assumption; namely: Balance can be achieved while still permitting "high fantasy casters" and "mundanes" in the same game.

This assumption might be valid... or it might not. The only real way to check would be to try it... can you balance the "high fantasy casters" with the "mundanes" without doing either of two things:
1) Scrapping the massive number of options present to the "high fantasy casters" (e.g., removing many individual spells).
2) Beefing up what's available to the "mundanes" to the point where the term no longer applies.

Woah, your missing a couple things here:

3)Dangerous Magic. Magic is a great, powerful force that people can just barley use and control and with the slightest blink can be very harmful and even kill. 1E and 2E D&D did magic of this type. Teleport is powerful, yes....but it can also kill your character. The same is true with all powerful magic.

4)High Magic World. Everyone has defenses, both mundane and magical. It's an endless 'race', but no one ability will ever put you on top...for long.

5)Dangerous World. Again, like 1E and 2E. The whole world is dangerous. So watch out.

6)Making a couple, simple alterations to magic use.




A party has to get through a large dungeon complex full of patrolling zombies in order to save a girl from being sacrificed by the evil necromancer. The party wizard casts an illusion of a wall in one of the rooms, allowing the party to safely pass several mindless zombies without having to worry about being attacked.


This is a good example, but is it:

A)A typical example of a typical encounter in the game

Or

B)One of many, many, many types of encounters.

See there is a huge difference.......

A lot of DMs toss out the weakest encounters possible, and when the wizard defeats the encounter with easy just sit back and say ''yup, the game is unbalanced". Now a good game should have weak encounters, medium encounters, and hard encounters. Not just ''all easy".

[Hackulator]

A lot of DMs toss out the weakest encounters possible, and when the wizard defeats the encounter with easy just sit back and say ''yup, the game is unbalanced". Now a good game should have weak encounters, medium encounters, and hard encounters. Not just ''all easy".

This is not the kind of balance people are talking about. The question is whether all classes can meaningfully contribute to all level of encounters, and whether one class makes other classes completely unnecessary at certain levels of encounters.

[upho]

The reason for those two restrictions:
If you scrap individual spells, you're removing options, which inherently removes some of the breadth of the system.
If you file the serial numbers off of a caster class and call it "mundane", you've effectively removed the option for a non-magical class, and forced the "mundanes" into the realm of anime and wuxia. That's great for folks who like those sorts of fantasy, but it removes some breadth from the game and removes the option of playing an essentially mundane character.I seriously don't get this reasoning. Could you please explain:

Why do you insist on calling current non-caster classes "mundane" when they have virtually zero properties which fit the definition of the word (see spoiler below)?
Why is it that if something in the current system can only be done by caster class, that something cannot possibly be done by a non-caster without also being in "the ream of anime and wuxia"? (And since when are the stories of say Cú Chulainn, Hercules or (movie) Thor categorized as "anime or wuxia"?)
Why is it impossible to for example make "fighter 10" the mechanical equivalent of the current "fighter 20", without also removing "the option of playing an essentially mundane character"?
Why should "mundane" PCs be an option in a heroic fantasy game?

Definitions (https://www.google.com/search?q=mundane+definition&oq=mundane+definition&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4533j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) of mundane:

1: lacking interest or excitement; dull.
"his mundane, humdrum existence"
Synonyms: humdrum, dull, boring, tedious, monotonous, tiresome, wearisome, prosaic, unexciting, uninteresting, uneventful, unvarying, unvaried, unremarkable, repetitive, repetitious, routine, ordinary, everyday, day-to-day, quotidian, run-of-the-mill, commonplace, common, workaday, usual, pedestrian, customary, regular, normal; unimaginative, banal, hackneyed, trite, stale, platitudinous; informaltypical, vanilla, plain vanilla, hacky; rare banausic

2: of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one.
"according to the Shinto doctrine, spirits of the dead can act upon the mundane world"
synonyms: earthly, worldly, terrestrial, material, temporal, secular, non-spiritual, fleshly, carnal, sensual; rare sublunary
"the mundane world"

[Mechalich]

I'm not assuming that, it's true. Warblades are balanced with Warlocks. Balancing casters and martials is not impossible. Wizards are balanced with Druids. Balancing characters with abilities that impact the plot is not impossible. The burden of proof is very much on the people who think balance is impossible to demonstrate that you can't do both of those things at once.

To expand upon this, we can look at other class-based games that use the d20 system and find that they are more balanced than 3.X, whether that be something like 5e or something like Starfinder. Both games still have balance problems, but they are significantly less extreme than 3.X has. Now, that doesn't necessarily make them better games, because it's part of a cost-benefit comparison with other components of the system, but it's a useful example of how things can be made to work. Starfinder, which I understand is in some ways a dry run for PF 2.0, is a particularly useful example. Starfinder annihilates all spells above level six, effectively turning all 'caster' type classes into partial casters around the Tier 3 mark, and it's certainly possible to crank a 'mundane' type up to that point with only a few modest structural changes.

This is illustrative in a particular fashion that, in the d20 system, full casters, once you crank the system mastery above the 'blaster' level, simply stronger than anyone ever intended them to be. An optimized Wizard or Druid in the upper spectrum of the level range is operating with the kind of "phenomenal cosmic power" that even players of Mage: the Ascension aren't used to having and is capable of obliterating with Thanos-snap levels of ease opposition by pretty much any contemporary fantasy antagonist. These are the kind of characters that people like later-book Rand al'Thor can't touch, with a mystical mastery that makes Dr. Strange curl up into a ball and cry.

Storytelling for characters of this level of power is extremely difficult, and, more importantly, it involves scenarios and dilemmas so unfamiliar that most gaming groups are uninterested in them. Now, obviously some people will disagree, and I'm perfectly willing to accept that D&D should have an 'epic-level' zone where your characters wander the planes and play cosmic games as arch-masters, but that should be a set of optional rules, not an unexpected part of the core.


And, yes, you said "mundanes", but that's irrelevant for a host of reasons. Most pressingly, there are certainly going to be some levels where characters are mundane in practice. But it's also true that even nominally-mundane classes like the Fighter aren't in practice once you get to high levels, and that there simply aren't twenty gradations of power within mundanity (seriously, try to come up with a list of twenty different characters where the strongest is "Conan" and tell me you'd be satisfied with that progression).

The level-based system of D&D has a particular utility in supporting zero-to-hero character functionality. The problem is that, for different theoretical concepts 'hero' caps at different places. For example, in professional sports, most players hit peak achievement levels shortly after their bodies finish maturation. They may gain more skill via experience thereafter, but such improvements tend to be rather marginal and are always in a race against physical decline. Basketball players, for instance, are often thought of as a having a 'prime' zone from around age 25-32.

So a warrior type character could achieve the peak of their capability after a year of training and a couple of years of intense combat experience, and after that everything is tinkering on the margins - the E6 fighter, who caps at level 6 and then continues to slowly add feats, mirrors this experience moderately well. However, this is not a thing confined to mundanity. A superhero type character might be suddenly blessed with titanic powers and never be able to fundamental increase them. They would then spend a period of time mastering and tinkering with them to become more capable, but their overall ability would only increase moderately. Captain America is a good example of this kind of character - his power is roughly the same always, but he keeps adding new shield tricks and becoming a better leader.

Now the trick is that a character whose power is 'learns magic' (for various values of magic) has an ultimate limit that is 'whatever magic can do' which might be nigh-infinite. So in a zero-to-hero scenario they never stop going up, even after everyone else's progression has stalled. If you're going to have characters of this type alongside characters who occupy a much more narrow theoretical space, then you have to impose limits on what magic can do. This is certainly possible: in Skyrim what magic can do is consistently less effective than face-stabbing outside of a few McGuffins.

[Hackulator]

I seriously don't get this reasoning. Could you please explain:

Why do you insist on calling current non-caster classes "mundane" when they have virtually zero properties which fit the definition of the word (see spoiler below)?
Why is it that if something in the current system can only be done by caster class, that something cannot possibly be done by a non-caster without also being in "the ream of anime and wuxia"? (And since when are the stories of say Cú Chulainn, Hercules or (movie) Thor categorized as "anime or wuxia"?)
Why is it impossible to for example make "fighter 10" the mechanical equivalent of the current "fighter 20", without also removing "the option of playing an essentially mundane character"?
Why should "mundane" PCs be an option in a heroic fantasy game?



1) That is the generally accepted term for classes without supernatural abilities on this board.

2) I don't really care about the realm of anime and Wuxia, it's just the point that when you go that route you're basically saying "the way to make the fighter more balanced with the wizard is to make him more like the wizard" which of course works but eventually makes everyone a wizard.

3) It's possible but making a Fighter 10 into a Fighter 20 pretty much just ups his damage output which is really not the issue here when discussing tiers or balance.

4) Because people want to play them

The fact is that using magic is understandably better than not using magic just like using modern technology is better than using medieval technology. Casters and noncasters cannot be balanced as long as one group can break the laws of reality and the other, generally, cannot. If you grant the weaker group the ability to break the laws of reality, you are basically just making them casters of some other type.

[upho]

This is a good example, but is it:

/irrelevant stuff cut for brevity/:smallconfused: And why does any of this matter?

Please read the post again (and previous posts if necessary), 'cause I strongly suspect you've completely missed the specific context and discussion this example was used in. In short, it was merely used to test Quertus' definitions of "narrative power" and "button power" (or "'power' power") as a situation which I believe would be far more common than "one PC convinces another PC to let a third PC use their special magic thingy".

This discussion has absolutely nothing specifically to do with "wizards vs fighters", "GM ability to challenge wizard" or anything similar. You're welcome to change the wizard, spell and situation into basically any PC, mechanically regulated ability and combat situation you prefer. Just be aware that if you do, there's a considerable risk you'll make things needlessly complicated and make it more difficult for you to get the point I was making.


This is not the kind of balance people are talking about. The question is whether all classes can meaningfully contribute to all level of encounters, and whether one class makes other classes completely unnecessary at certain levels of encounters.Generally speaking, this thread is actually not about whether all classes are enough mechanically balanced, but about whether have to be and whether they should be. And the specific discussion DU replied to is a rather specific subset of that (see my reply to DU above).

[Quertus]

@Everyone - basic concept that I want to beat into an undead horse: there are people who only enjoy doing, people who only enjoy thinking/planning, people who can enjoy either, and people who only enjoy both together.

Knowing which is which, you can have as a party Thor & a sentient potted plant, where one does the lion's share of the party's doing, another does only planning, the rest do a more balanced combination of the two, and everyone has a good time.

@upho - very thought-provoking couple of posts. I'll respond to them when I am capable of said thoughts, let alone articulating them.

[Hackulator]

@Everyone - basic concept that I want to beat into an undead horse: there are people who only enjoy doing, people who only enjoy thinking/planning, people who can enjoy either, and people who only enjoy both together.

Knowing which is which, you can have as a party Thor & a sentient potted plant, where one does the lion's share of the party's doing, another does only planning, the rest do a more balanced combination of the two, and everyone has a good time.

@upho - very thought-provoking couple of posts. I'll respond to them when I am capable of said thoughts, let alone articulating them.

A party of Leon, Mathilda, and the potted plant Leon takes everywhere with him.

From the movie Leon: The Professional if anyone doesn't get the reference.

[ryu]

And five is a smaller number than twenty. Cosi, WHY is it so hard to grok that less numbers going up is automatically going to rub that hind-brain the wrong way? It's simple. Not to mention a core conceit in the majority of rpgs for literally the last few decades.

[Cosi]

An optimized Wizard or Druid in the upper spectrum of the level range is operating with the kind of "phenomenal cosmic power" that even players of Mage: the Ascension aren't used to having and is capable of obliterating with Thanos-snap levels of ease opposition by pretty much any contemporary fantasy antagonist.

I disagree with this assessment fairly strongly, unless we're defining "optimized" as meaning "infinite minion loops" and "upper spectrum of the level range" as "20th level". An optimized Wizard is certainly powerful, but something like a Wizard 5/Mage of the Arcane Order 10 with Spontaneous Divination and a strong spell selection (BFC spells, utility spells, planar binding for a small number of minions or for utility), is not absurdly outside the idiom of contemporary fantasy. He fits reasonably well into the Malazan, The Second Apocalypse, and Cradle (maybe not the party currently, but certainly the setting). I could name more examples, but I think that suffices to show that we're not really dealing with an Outside Context Problem here.


The level-based system of D&D has a particular utility in supporting zero-to-hero character functionality. The problem is that, for different theoretical concepts 'hero' caps at different places.

This is certainly true, and to tie it back into the point about wanting to see numbers go up, while you want your character to acquire new abilities, you also want to get to tell stories about when your character has the abilities you care about. If you want to play a knight in shining armor who defends maidens from dragons, you don't just want to get progressively bigger bonuses to wearing armor and riding horses, you also want to eventually reach the point where you can use those abilities to rescue a maiden from a dragon. And you probably want that to happen sooner than later, because campaigns don't last forever. The 3e solution where the Paladin doesn't get a horse til 4th level is not really satisfying for someone who wants to play a mounted knight.


it's just the point that when you go that route you're basically saying "the way to make the fighter more balanced with the wizard is to make him more like the wizard" which of course works but eventually makes everyone a wizard.

Again, you haven't defined "Wizard". It seems obvious to me that there are lots of ways to make someone balanced with Wizards without making them into a Wizard. Consider some characters from Avengers: Infinity War. Doctor Strange is pretty clearly a Wizard. And he is one of the more powerful characters in the movie. But he's not the most powerful character in the movie. Both Thor and Iron Man are stronger than he is, and neither one is something I would describe as a Wizard. Thor is clearly a Barbarian with a PrC that grants weather magic, and Iron Man is conceptually an Artificer (though there are arguments for mechanically representing him as a Warlock).

So what makes someone a Wizard? Do you just mean "has supernatural power"? Is it an aesthetic descriptor, where anyone who casts spells and wears robes is a Wizard? Is it mechanical, and anyone with a big list of abilities they prepare a smaller list from is a Wizard? What about existing classes? Is a Sorcerer basically a Wizard? Is a Warlock basically a Wizard? Is a Swordsage basically a Wizard? Is a Dread Necromancer basically a Wizard? Is a Binder basically a Wizard?


And five is a smaller number than twenty. Cosi, WHY is it so hard to grok that less numbers going up is automatically going to rub that hind-brain the wrong way? It's simple. Not to mention a core conceit in the majority of rpgs for literally the last few decades.

Yes, and the number twenty is smaller than the number thirty. And the number thirty is smaller than the number one hundred. And the number one hundred is smaller than the number one billion. People clearly do not need their numbers to go up as much as possible to be satisfied with the game.

[Crake]

Again, you haven't defined "Wizard". It seems obvious to me that there are lots of ways to make someone balanced with Wizards without making them into a Wizard. Consider some characters from Avengers: Infinity War. Doctor Strange is pretty clearly a Wizard. And he is one of the more powerful characters in the movie. But he's not the most powerful character in the movie. Both Thor and Iron Man are stronger than he is, and neither one is something I would describe as a Wizard. Thor is clearly a Barbarian with a PrC that grants weather magic, and Iron Man is conceptually an Artificer (though there are arguments for mechanically representing him as a Warlock).

Uhhh, what? Have you actually watched any of the marvel movies? Thor and Iron Man are not stronger than doctor strange.

[Cosi]

Uhhh, what? Have you actually watched any of the marvel movies? Thor and Iron Man are not stronger than doctor strange.

Yes they are. All three have solo fights with Thanos, and Strange is clearly the least effective. Iron Man draws blood, and gets explicitly acknowledged as a worth opponent by Thanos. Thor throws Stormbringer at Thanos through a blast from the Infinity Gauntlet, and it's still the most serious injury anyone inflicts on Thanos. And, according the word of god, if he'd gone for the head as Thanos suggests, it would have killed Thanos. You could maybe argue Iron Man, but by both on-screen feats and WoG, Thor is stronger than Strange.

[Jack_Simth]

I'm not assuming that, it's true. Warblades are balanced with Warlocks. Balancing casters and martials is not impossible. Wizards are balanced with Druids. Balancing characters with abilities that impact the plot is not impossible. The burden of proof is very much on the people who think balance is impossible to demonstrate that you can't do both of those things at once.

If you're doing the Warblade & Warlock, then you've removed breadth from the game - namely the Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, etcetera - those that do not fit the target balance zone.

I'm not saying the game cannot be more balanced - but all reasonably-successful attempts I've ever seen to do so make it more balanced by either cutting out options seen as too far away from the target balance zone (whether cut via a hard ban by simply not allowing it, or a soft ban by making it have drawbacks to the point where basically nobody will ever use it), or by pushing things seen as too far below the balance zone up (to the point where I'd call it wuxia or anime style for the Mundanes; and yes, I count the Tome of Battle base classes in that category). These are not necessarily bad things, of themselves, but do remove breadth from the game.


And, yes, you said "mundanes", but that's irrelevant for a host of reasons. Most pressingly, there are certainly going to be some levels where characters are mundane in practice. But it's also true that even nominally-mundane classes like the Fighter aren't in practice once you get to high levels, and that there simply aren't twenty gradations of power within mundanity (seriously, try to come up with a list of twenty different characters where the strongest is "Conan" and tell me you'd be satisfied with that progression).
Didn't say I would be satisfied with the progression. I'm of the opinion that unbalanced is only sometimes an issue; it's more of a "pick your poison" scenario from my perspective. Look back a few pages to confirm that if you'd like.


Woah, your missing a couple things here:

3)Dangerous Magic. Magic is a great, powerful force that people can just barley use and control and with the slightest blink can be very harmful and even kill. 1E and 2E D&D did magic of this type. Teleport is powerful, yes....but it can also kill your character. The same is true with all powerful magic.

4)High Magic World. Everyone has defenses, both mundane and magical. It's an endless 'race', but no one ability will ever put you on top...for long.

5)Dangerous World. Again, like 1E and 2E. The whole world is dangerous. So watch out.

6)Making a couple, simple alterations to magic use.

So... you're saying I'm missing things from my list that would make it more balanced, but remove breadth from the game in doing? I'm pretty sure I'm not understanding your intent correctly. You may wish to re-word.

Assuming for the moment you mean "these are things you can do to make the game more balanced without removing breadth from the system"...

3) If you get it to the point where it brings the high casters down to the level of the mundanes, you've mostly put a soft-ban on magic. Also, you've removed the option of re-creating the scenes in Sword and the Stone where Merlin turns himself and the young Arthur into small animals to teach him something about the world - which is removing breadth from the game (3.5 can do that at about 7th, via Polymorph).

4, 5, & 6) I've yet to see an example where that actually functions to put mundanes and high-fantasy casters on the same level. I'm not saying it's not possible... I'm saying "might be valid... or it might not. The only real way to check would be to try it." Care to provide an example for analysis?

[Cosi]

If you're doing the Warblade & Warlock, then you've removed breadth from the game - namely the Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, etcetera - those that do not fit the target balance zone.

No you're not. Those classes were given as proof of concept that you can balance "uses a sword" and "uses magic". You can then adjust the power of those classes to be equal to whichever other classes you care about (or vice versa). So the onus is on you to show that either:

A) The identity of the Warblade and the Warlock is intrinsically tied to their current power level, and the classes would become unrecognizable if the power of their abilities was increased to be on par with a Wizard.
B) It is literally impossible to write a list of maneuvers or invocations that can produce characters on a power level comparable to the Wizard.

Those claims are very much not obvious, but I invite you to explain why you believe at least one of them (or something similar). We know of balanced subsets of the game that individually have whatever properties we might want. It's on the anti-balance people to show that those subsets can't be extended to an acceptable breadth without losing the properties we care about.

[Talakeal]

Question, does anyone actually like the 3.X implementation of the fighter?

Because it is commonly used as the poster boy for the mundane side in these caster vs mundane debates, but frankly I feel that it is an absolutely terribly implemented class and I am legitimately wondering if anyone will actually defend the design or if it is just a straw-man that they assume appeals to someone.



D&D 3.5 is accidentally the closest to flawless tabletop experience that has ever existed. All you need to do is be upfront about the inherent inequality, label everything, and you're done.

Surely you mean that it is your favorite game, right?

Objectively 3.5 is full of flaws.

Subjectively it might meet your needs for a super high powered game of nigh omnipotent wizards, but how many other games like that have you played?

Have you actually played every game out there extensively? How much time have you spent playing other high level games in other high powered RPGs like Mage, Ars Magica, In Nomine, Exalted, Nobilis, Immortals Basic D&D, etc.?

How can you be so sure that one of those doesn't better fit your subjective criteria for a flawless tabletop experiance?


I'm not assuming that, it's true. Warblades are balanced with Warlocks. Balancing casters and martials is not impossible. Wizards are balanced with Druids. Balancing characters with abilities that impact the plot is not impossible. The burden of proof is very much on the people who think balance is impossible to demonstrate that you can't do both of those things at once.

And, yes, you said "mundanes", but that's irrelevant for a host of reasons. Most pressingly, there are certainly going to be some levels where characters are mundane in practice. But it's also true that even nominally-mundane classes like the Fighter aren't in practice once you get to high levels, and that there simply aren't twenty gradations of power within mundanity (seriously, try to come up with a list of twenty different characters where the strongest is "Conan" and tell me you'd be satisfied with that progression).

Well, I can imagine a fighter who can defeat a CR 20 monster in a one on one fight, and the same for every other CR pre epic, so there's that.

Has anyone actually said that Conan represents the pinnacle of what a mundane character should be? Coman is a cool archetype, but saying he is the be all and end all of "mundane" characters seems to be a bit of a straw man. Despite the ELH listing him as an example epic character I have trouble seeing him higher than level eight or so, and that is with a couple of levels of rogue.

Overall though I agree with almost everything you have said in this thread.

[MeimuHakurei]

Question, does anyone actually like the 3.X implementation of the fighter?

Because it is commonly used as the poster boy for the mundane side in these caster vs mundane debates, but frankly I feel that it is an absolutely terribly implemented class and I am legitimately wondering if anyone will actually defend the design or if it is just a straw-man that they assume appeals to someone.

The Fighter is used as a stand-in for mundane classes due to its recognizability and having the least ties to the supernatural (though the Rogue is occasionally also cited in topics for character roles and sometimes mundane utility). The Ranger, Paladin and Monk, as well as a few branches of the Barbarian class are all clearly magical/supernatural in one way of another, so they're generally not ideal examples for what a mundane character is.

[Morty]

Question, does anyone actually like the 3.X implementation of the fighter?

Because it is commonly used as the poster boy for the mundane side in these caster vs mundane debates, but frankly I feel that it is an absolutely terribly implemented class and I am legitimately wondering if anyone will actually defend the design or if it is just a straw-man that they assume appeals to someone.

Two arguments for it I have seen are either liking it for its "flexibility", which baffles me, and lumping it together with the idea of a non-magical warrior winning through training and strength. And then acting as if the 3E fighter is the only way to express it. The flexibility argument, I assume, comes from people who don't know many games outside of D&D. And a lot of the time, like MeimuHakurei said, "fighter" is used as a short-hand for all sorts of classes.

In truth, neither the fighter nor the wizard are remotely good balance points. Well, I suppose a level 5-7 wizard might be. At that point, they're not miserably weak like on lower levels, but aren't he boring invincible nerd superheroes they become later.

[HouseRules]

Well, I defined some house rules vocabulary to determine the distinctions.

Natural Abilities divide into Ordinary Natural Abilities and Extraordinary Natural Abilities. Ordinary Natural Abilities are labelled Natural Abilities by the game, and Extraordinary Natural Abilities are labelled Extraordinary Abilities by the game.

Similarly, Supernatural Abilities divide into Ordinary Supernatural Abilities and Extraordinary Supernatural Abilities. The Ordinary Supernatural Abilities are labelled Supernatural Abilities by the game, and the Extraordinary Supernatural Abilities each have different labels depending on the subsystem they are part of. Extraordinary Supernatural Abilities consists of Spell-Like Abilities, Psi-Like Abilities, and other Magical Effects that are not labelled Supernatural Ability.

While Spellcasting is a Natural Ability, Spell Effects are Extraordinary Supernatural Ability.

Edit:
When a Fighter uses Magic Arms and Armor, they are not Mundane.
When a Rogue uses Use Magic Device, they are not Mundane.

[EldritchWeaver]

I'm not saying the game cannot be more balanced - but all reasonably-successful attempts I've ever seen to do so make it more balanced by either cutting out options seen as too far away from the target balance zone (whether cut via a hard ban by simply not allowing it, or a soft ban by making it have drawbacks to the point where basically nobody will ever use it), or by pushing things seen as too far below the balance zone up (to the point where I'd call it wuxia or anime style for the Mundanes; and yes, I count the Tome of Battle base classes in that category). These are not necessarily bad things, of themselves, but do remove breadth from the game.

I think you can have a game where all of the options are available, but you can't reasonable use them all in the same group. So effectively you need to label abilities to be able to determine if an option is appropriate.

[Hackulator]

So here's a question.

If 3.5 had shipped with the tier system described in the books, and it said "hey look these classes are not the same power level at the same level of optimization because guy who swings sword doesn't match guy who bends reality so either don't put them together or be prepared for that issue" would people still have anything to complain about regarding this issue?

[MeimuHakurei]

So here's a question.

If 3.5 had shipped with the tier system described in the books, and it said "hey look these classes are not the same power level at the same level of optimization because guy who swings sword doesn't match guy who bends reality so either don't put them together or be prepared for that issue" would people still have anything to complain about regarding this issue?

The complaint would mostly be on not having a Tier 1 option for a martial character probably.

[Hackulator]

The complaint would mostly be on not having a Tier 1 option for a martial character probably.

The tier 1 option for a martial character would be to build a tier 1 class around self buffs and melee, which you can certainly do.

[Talakeal]

So here's a question.

If 3.5 had shipped with the tier system described in the books, and it said "hey look these classes are not the same power level at the same level of optimization because guy who swings sword doesn't match guy who bends reality so either don't put them together or be prepared for that issue" would people still have anything to complain about regarding this issue?

I think the system would have been DoA. If people were told upfront that they couldnt nave the classic fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue dungeon crawling experiance that was iconic d&d they never would have given the game a chance and it would not have a devoted fanbase to this day.

Althihgh a few hardcore 3e fans might be having a similar conversation about how the system could be fixed and if such a thing would be worth doing.

[HouseRules]

The tier 1 option for a martial character would be to build a tier 1 class around self buffs and melee, which you can certainly do.

Not exactly Tier 1 if they focus on the self buff and lost utility. They may be Tier 2 at best under such circumstances.

[Hackulator]

Not exactly Tier 1 if they focus on the self buff and lost utility. They may be Tier 2 at best under such circumstances.

A tier 1 class can maintain utility and still have plenty of room for self buffs.

[ryu]

Not going to bother with quoting and pruning because that's tedious and the person who made the request knows who they are.

Tried exalted. Abstracted too many details turning the wonderfully complex strategy to a game of happy slaps. All style no substance, play Xenoblade Chronicles instead.

Prospective other games? Literally the only flaw in 3.5 is that it doesn't label things which gets people into a confused mess about muggles equaling the closest thing we'd have to gods were they to show up in our world. Unless you want to count the tedious busywork necessary to actually make the game happen, but you aint skipping that without creating software stupidly complex beyond the scope of human knowability. ALL other aspects I will personally defend to the death in a back ally wifflebat fight. Tongue in cheek talk of what the argument would be should be obvious.

Even the stupid weakling peasants can be used to model the destitute/untalented/opportunity challenged of any given setting.

[JNAProductions]

Not going to bother with quoting and pruning because that's tedious and the person who made the request knows who they are.

Tried exalted. Abstracted too many details turning the wonderfully complex strategy to a game of happy slaps. All style no substance, play Xenoblade Chronicles instead.

Prospective other games? Literally the only flaw in 3.5 is that it doesn't label things which gets people into a confused mess about muggles equaling the closest thing we'd have to gods were they to show up in our world. Unless you want to count the tedious busywork necessary to actually make the game happen, but you aint skipping that without creating software stupidly complex beyond the scope of human knowability. ALL other aspects I will personally defend to the death in a back ally wifflebat fight. Tongue in cheek talk of what the argument would be should be obvious.

Even the stupid weakling peasants can be used to model the destitute/untalented/opportunity challenged of any given setting.

There are nine threads-find the latest one here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?508514-Dysfunctional-Rules-IX-1d3-Dysfunctions-from-the-8th-Level-List)-one rules dysfunctions.

So... What's that about "literally the only flaw"?

[ryu]

There are nine threads-find the latest one here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?508514-Dysfunctional-Rules-IX-1d3-Dysfunctions-from-the-8th-Level-List)-one rules dysfunctions.

So... What's that about "literally the only flaw"?

Hilarious therefore feature. Next.

[Talakeal]

Not going to bother with quoting and pruning because that's tedious and the person who made the request knows who they are.

Tried exalted. Abstracted too many details turning the wonderfully complex strategy to a game of happy slaps. All style no substance, play Xenoblade Chronicles instead.

Prospective other games? Literally the only flaw in 3.5 is that it doesn't label things which gets people into a confused mess about muggles equaling the closest thing we'd have to gods were they to show up in our world. Unless you want to count the tedious busywork necessary to actually make the game happen, but you aint skipping that without creating software stupidly complex beyond the scope of human knowability. ALL other aspects I will personally defend to the death in a back ally wifflebat fight. Tongue in cheek talk of what the argument would be should be obvious.

Even the stupid weakling peasants can be used to model the destitute/untalented/opportunity challenged of any given setting.

I can't argue with that.

I mean, literally, that is an unfalsifiable argument.

[ryu]

I can't argue with that.

I mean, literally, that is an unfalsifiable argument.

Fun fact, people generally do not hold positions they consider to be wrong. You could find some section of the game you consider to be flawed, make arguments for why. Anything involving the arguments silly, unintended, or overly complicated are doomed to fail as just demonstrated. I'm of the opinion that most of the designers were incompetents who not only couldn't design something internally consistent, but that the game they intended, the touted classic party and classic playstyle, was boring. They created the greatest tabletop ever, by accident.

Edit: Oh or you could suggest a game that actually delivers on my desires better. Exalted got denied because power isn't the soul defining asset. You need substantive, hilariously complex strategy ceiling.

[Morty]

So here's a question.

If 3.5 had shipped with the tier system described in the books, and it said "hey look these classes are not the same power level at the same level of optimization because guy who swings sword doesn't match guy who bends reality so either don't put them together or be prepared for that issue" would people still have anything to complain about regarding this issue?


The complaint would mostly be on not having a Tier 1 option for a martial character probably.

Furthermore, the low-tier PHB classes, fighters in particular, are bad even without comparing them to spellcasters. So that would only go so far. And a core game with no spellcasters... would look like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only everyone might be able to take a ballista bolt to the face if it's high level.

[Talakeal]

Fun fact, people generally do not hold positions they consider to be wrong.

True, but there are a great many people who will continue to argue a position that they know to be ludicrous.

[ryu]

Furthermore, the low-tier PHB classes, fighters in particular, are bad even without comparing them to spellcasters. So that would only go so far. And a core game with no spellcasters... would look like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only everyone might be able to take a ballista bolt to the face if it's high level.

That's the single best job anyone has ever done, and will likely ever do for arguing a mundane campaign in my presence. I still likely wouldn't do it, but I can see it being non-miserable. Congratulations.

Edit: Not ludicrous to me. Got dragged through dozens of other games for at least a session, disappointed every time. Spent years exalting in 3.5. Mountain of supporting evidence.

[Gnaeus]

Question, does anyone actually like the 3.X implementation of the fighter?

Because it is commonly used as the poster boy for the mundane side in these caster vs mundane debates, but frankly I feel that it is an absolutely terribly implemented class and I am legitimately wondering if anyone will actually defend the design or if it is just a straw-man that they assume appeals to someone.a.


The Fighter is used as a stand-in for mundane classes due to its recognizability and having the least ties to the supernatural (though the Rogue is occasionally also cited in topics for character roles and sometimes mundane utility). The Ranger, Paladin and Monk, as well as a few branches of the Barbarian class are all clearly magical/supernatural in one way of another, so they're generally not ideal examples for what a mundane character is.

Also, fighter is core. And there are clearly worse mundanes than fighter. Monk. Swashbuckler. Knight. Soulknife. TWF Ranger. Samurai. Most of us (I suspect) would agree that most of them are horrible classes. Fighter seems to get the nod because we don’t have to analyze the comparative values of fast movement or disease immunity or 2 extra skill points or other niche abilities, just contributing in combat. I don’t think that I’ve seen any arguments regarding fighter that wouldn’t be equally or more valid regarding other, worse T5 classes.

[Cosi]

Well, I can imagine a fighter who can defeat a CR 20 monster in a one on one fight, and the same for every other CR pre epic, so there's that.

So what does that character look like? Because Captain America -- who is physically superhuman and has an artifact shield -- spends the climax of the first Avengers movie not personally fighting monsters that are like dragons, except without breath weapons or spellcasting. He punches a bunch of Chitauri, but the space whale/snake/dragon monsters get dispatched by Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man.


The Fighter is used as a stand-in for mundane classes due to its recognizability and having the least ties to the supernatural (though the Rogue is occasionally also cited in topics for character roles and sometimes mundane utility). The Ranger, Paladin and Monk, as well as a few branches of the Barbarian class are all clearly magical/supernatural in one way of another, so they're generally not ideal examples for what a mundane character is.

The Fighter is notable because, in addition to being mechanically subpar, it has serious conceptual problems. Notably, the name gives the class a mandate to ... fight. But every class fights, so really what it does is define the character as not being part of other important aspects of the game like "exploration" and "negotiation" and it fails to give the character a shtick to actually use in combat. There are classes that are worse (like the Monk), but those classes are generally worse for contingent mechanical reasons, not fundamental conceptual ones. The Monk is bad, but if you declared that the Monk could do Exalted-style (or even Tome of Battle-style) magic kung fu, it would be substantially less bad. But for the Fighter to be good, it has to stop being a Fighter.


In truth, neither the fighter nor the wizard are remotely good balance points. Well, I suppose a level 5-7 wizard might be. At that point, they're not miserably weak like on lower levels, but aren't he boring invincible nerd superheroes they become later.

The degree to which high level Wizards are "boring invincible nerd superheroes" and beyond the scope of any source material is pretty massively overstated. The level of optimization where Wizards overshadow mundanes is much lower than the level where they become unkillable TO monstrosities (and, as I have often noted, the fact that abilities like teleport are Wizard-exclusive locks you into some degree of Wizard balance point unless you throw those abilities out wholesale). And while the Wizard is more powerful than a lot of fantasy stories, there are still plenty of fantasy stories he is appropriate in, and (again, as noted) twenty levels is really a lot of levels. You're not spending all of that on the difference between the Mountain and the Hound. A 10/5/5 split between Heroic (purely mundane), Paragon (lower end superheroes), and Epic (full gonzo) is enough to cover pretty much any character in fantasy reasonably well. There's really nothing you're losing from having ten levels of mundane warrior instead of twenty levels of mundane warrior.


If 3.5 had shipped with the tier system described in the books, and it said "hey look these classes are not the same power level at the same level of optimization because guy who swings sword doesn't match guy who bends reality so either don't put them together or be prepared for that issue" would people still have anything to complain about regarding this issue?

Yes, specifically the fact that "multiple balance points" is an absolutely terrible way for the game to work. It's not just that having it be non-obvious sucks, it's that the paradigm sucks flat out. Most obviously, it means you are committing to an extraordinarily inefficient ratio of "content printed" to "content anyone uses". Imagine that you launched with a game with three distinct tiers. There are only eleven classes in the core rules, so even assuming a perfectly even distribution of classes, there's going to be a tier where you can't put together a full four-man party. Unless you're skewing towards one tier (making the other problem even worse), there's no tier where you can have more than one party composition. And the actual tier system has six tiers!

And even getting into expansion material -- which, again, you need for everyone to get their own class -- you still have to write everything three times. I don't care that you can make a Wizard-level character that is Barbarian-ish by speccing your Druid appropriately, the fact that we had to write that Druid ACF/ability suite/PrC/whatever means that we didn't get to write one that lets your Druid be a Vermin Master or a Dragonlord or whatever they might aspire to be in a world where the Barbarian class could actually cover the whole system's needs for people who get angry and smash things. Not to mention that we have as many as four other tiers that are notionally supported and all need some version of "angry warrior" that is going to take up even more space and mean that even less concepts actually get covered.

And that's not even discussing questions like "how the hell is CR supposed to work in this system" (hint: it won't) and "what balance point should non-class options be at" and "what happens when someone really likes one of the abilities of a class in a different tier from the rest of the party". Making the game actually balanced is simply the overwhelmingly superior option according to an reasonable analysis.

[RifleAvenger]

Edit: Oh or you could suggest a game that actually delivers on my desires better. Exalted got denied because power isn't the soul defining asset. You need substantive, hilariously complex strategy ceiling. Mage.

Not much in the tactical wargame manner. But if your storyteller is playing just as hard to do in the party as the party is to their enemies, you can easily have the same nth level wizard chess contingency fest as 3.5, with convoluted politics stapled on at every level from apprentice to Exarch/Oracle, complete with creating sentient demiplanes capable of their own spellcasting out of your soul and literally rewriting the sourcecode of the universe at the archmage level of play. Even starting characters have a weakened form of epic spellcasting (and time stop and rewinding the last turn if someone begins w/ Time 3) and it just gets crazier from there.

[Darth Ultron]

This is not the kind of balance people are talking about. The question is whether all classes can meaningfully contribute to all level of encounters, and whether one class makes other classes completely unnecessary at certain levels of encounters.

Then it would seem everyone is talking about the wrong kind of balance.

Is the question really ''can all classes meaningfully contribute to all levels and types of encounters every second of the game time every time all the time?" See, then that is the wrong question.

It only gets worse if the question is ''can someone just 'play the game' and expect the game to be perfectly balanced for no reason."?



Assuming for the moment you mean "these are things you can do to make the game more balanced without removing breadth from the system"...

I'll admit I don't know what the ''breath" of the game is....



3) If you get it to the point where it brings the high casters down to the level of the mundanes, you've mostly put a soft-ban on magic. Also, you've removed the option of re-creating the scenes in Sword and the Stone where Merlin turns himself and the young Arthur into small animals to teach him something about the world - which is removing breadth from the game (3.5 can do that at about 7th, via Polymorph).

Well, ok, if this ''point'' exists, then simply don't go there.



4, 5, & 6) I've yet to see an example where that actually functions to put mundanes and high-fantasy casters on the same level. I'm not saying it's not possible... I'm saying "might be valid... or it might not. The only real way to check would be to try it." Care to provide an example for analysis?

Sure, though really this should be it's own thread.



Here is a thought about balance:

D&D has always been very much a 'toolbox' game: the rules are tools that let YOU build and make your own game. And even better way to describe it is D&D gives you a blank canvas, brushes and paint: you can create any picture you want. In D&D The Rules are the Canvas, Brushes and Paint: the rules tell you how to 'paint': dip brush in paint and then touch it to blank canvas. The rules, and game, DO not tell you in any way what to paint.

To continue the metaphor: people are painting a picture doing just one thing...and it's not working, and then wonder why the Canvas, Brushes and Paint are not ''balanced". It's like people are:

A)Hanging the canvas on a wall
B)Putting a huge gob of paint at the top
C)Watching in shock as the huge gob of paint slides down the canvas

Then they throw down the brush and say ''well, clearly something is wrong with this paint set!"

Then someone like me comes along and I suggest:

A)Just put the canvas on the floor
B)Use a soft pencil to draw a rough idea of what you want to paint
C)Gently and slowly use only a tiny amount of paint on the tip of the brush to paint.

Then people respond that my suggestion is ''impossible".

This has always been the big draw for D&D

[ryu]

Mage.

Not much in the tactical wargame manner. But if your storyteller is playing just as hard to do in the party as the party is to their enemies, you can easily have the same nth level wizard chess contingency fest as 3.5, with convoluted politics stapled on at every level from apprentice to Exarch/Oracle, complete with creating sentient demiplanes capable of their own spellcasting out of your soul and literally rewriting the sourcecode of the universe at the archmage level of play. Even starting characters have a weakened form of epic spellcasting (and time stop and rewinding the last turn if someone begins w/ Time 3) and it just gets crazier from there.

It shall be googled... Later.

[Hackulator]

Mage.

Not much in the tactical wargame manner. But if your storyteller is playing just as hard to do in the party as the party is to their enemies, you can easily have the same nth level wizard chess contingency fest as 3.5, with convoluted politics stapled on at every level from apprentice to Exarch/Oracle, complete with creating sentient demiplanes capable of their own spellcasting out of your soul and literally rewriting the sourcecode of the universe at the archmage level of play. Even starting characters have a weakened form of epic spellcasting (and time stop and rewinding the last turn if someone begins w/ Time 3) and it just gets crazier from there.

Mage is by far my favorite White Wolf game and one of my favorite RPG settings overall. Sadly, I've had very little chance to play it.

[JNAProductions]

Then it would seem everyone is talking about the wrong kind of balance.

Is the question really ''can all classes meaningfully contribute to all levels and types of encounters every second of the game time every time all the time?" See, then that is the wrong question.

It only gets worse if the question is ''can someone just 'play the game' and expect the game to be perfectly balanced for no reason."?

Just to be clear, you're saying that the designers are under no obligation to make the game... You know, work how they say it does?

I lack a lot of knowledge of D&D before 3.5. But, to my understanding, it was never marketed as a balanced game. There was no expectation set by the designers that a Wizard 1 is equal to a Fighter 1, or that a Wizard 10 is equal to a Fighter 10. If anything, the exact opposite.

That's not true in 3.5-there's a clear expectation that any given character of level X is worth the same as any other character of level X. Which is plainly not true.

It really sounds like you're treating D&D as something it's not-it's NOT a generic game. It's not meant to be a pick-and-choose toolbox. You're thinking of, on the crunchier side, GURPS. Or on the more narrative side, FAE. You're free to twist and contort D&D into all sorts of weird shapes (hell, I'm gearing up to run a 5E Modern game, which is not at all what was intended) but that doesn't absolve the creators of responsibility to make it work how they say it does.

[Mechalich]

The Fighter is notable because, in addition to being mechanically subpar, it has serious conceptual problems. Notably, the name gives the class a mandate to ... fight. But every class fights, so really what it does is define the character as not being part of other important aspects of the game like "exploration" and "negotiation" and it fails to give the character a shtick to actually use in combat. There are classes that are worse (like the Monk), but those classes are generally worse for contingent mechanical reasons, not fundamental conceptual ones. The Monk is bad, but if you declared that the Monk could do Exalted-style (or even Tome of Battle-style) magic kung fu, it would be substantially less bad. But for the Fighter to be good, it has to stop being a Fighter.

The Fighter ought to have, at a minimum, all of the skill-based capabilities of the Aristocrat class, and also some sort of 'leadership style' mechanic like the Ranger's combat styles where they get something like the Teamwork feats available in Pathfinder (the Inquisitor class, hilariously, has a mechanic like this) - divided into archetypical warrior types like 'Duelist,' 'Tactician,' and 'Thug.' The fact that you can't build a character like Game of Thrones' Jamie Lannister or Jorah Mormont using purely fighter levels is just embarrassing.


The degree to which high level Wizards are "boring invincible nerd superheroes" and beyond the scope of any source material is pretty massively overstated. The level of optimization where Wizards overshadow mundanes is much lower than the level where they become unkillable TO monstrosities (and, as I have often noted, the fact that abilities like teleport are Wizard-exclusive locks you into some degree of Wizard balance point unless you throw those abilities out wholesale). And while the Wizard is more powerful than a lot of fantasy stories, there are still plenty of fantasy stories he is appropriate in, and (again, as noted) twenty levels is really a lot of levels. You're not spending all of that on the difference between the Mountain and the Hound. A 10/5/5 split between Heroic (purely mundane), Paragon (lower end superheroes), and Epic (full gonzo) is enough to cover pretty much any character in fantasy reasonably well. There's really nothing you're losing from having ten levels of mundane warrior instead of twenty levels of mundane warrior.

You can certainly say 'mundanes only got to level 10, casters got to level 20.' That can work at the party level, but it produces world-building issues. Unkillable TO monstrosities are a world-building problem, because they render the contribution of millions of people irrelevant and produce world-building distortions. Exalted, as a game, is a tour de force demonstration in how not properly managing the deployment of non-mundane powers can produce a setting and a system that fundamentally does not work. In fact, most higher-powered settings have this problem. Malazan, which is explicitly based on D&D, is a world-building disaster of untold proportions that rob its storytelling of any meaning because nonsensical fiat things happen one after another and there is no coherency.

Honestly, many of the higher-level abilities, including teleport, should be thrown out. Not wholesale, but they should be rare abilities useable one or two times per campaign, not daily. Or if you're going to have them, you have to have a limited world-building timeframe like Wheel of Time does because the proliferation of such abilities is not compatible with traditional fantasy medieval stasis.

This isn't a D&D problem really, so much as it is a general problem of scale. The much referenced Conan actually serves as a good example. Conan is a wholly mundane character - though he has more abilities than the average fighter for sure - but he regularly encounters extremely powerful wizards who can, and do, had him his head. These beings are on two completely different power scales, and it's difficult to construct a system where they can both interact with the same world as PCs. Many sword & sorcery settings are primarily compatible with having high-powered wizards as NPCs only, and if the PCs need access to abilities like teleport, they have to be provided by an NPC. It's a tricky puzzle.



Yes, specifically the fact that "multiple balance points" is an absolutely terrible way for the game to work. It's not just that having it be non-obvious sucks, it's that the paradigm sucks flat out. Most obviously, it means you are committing to an extraordinarily inefficient ratio of "content printed" to "content anyone uses". Imagine that you launched with a game with three distinct tiers. There are only eleven classes in the core rules, so even assuming a perfectly even distribution of classes, there's going to be a tier where you can't put together a full four-man party. Unless you're skewing towards one tier (making the other problem even worse), there's no tier where you can have more than one party composition. And the actual tier system has six tiers!

And even getting into expansion material -- which, again, you need for everyone to get their own class -- you still have to write everything three times. I don't care that you can make a Wizard-level character that is Barbarian-ish by speccing your Druid appropriately, the fact that we had to write that Druid ACF/ability suite/PrC/whatever means that we didn't get to write one that lets your Druid be a Vermin Master or a Dragonlord or whatever they might aspire to be in a world where the Barbarian class could actually cover the whole system's needs for people who get angry and smash things. Not to mention that we have as many as four other tiers that are notionally supported and all need some version of "angry warrior" that is going to take up even more space and mean that even less concepts actually get covered.

And that's not even discussing questions like "how the hell is CR supposed to work in this system" (hint: it won't) and "what balance point should non-class options be at" and "what happens when someone really likes one of the abilities of a class in a different tier from the rest of the party". Making the game actually balanced is simply the overwhelmingly superior option according to an reasonable analysis.

There's actually an example of all this happening: Exalted 2e. The various different Exalted types: Solars/Abyssals/Infernals, Lunars, Sidereals, Dragon-Blooded, plus lesser options like enhanced mortals, Dragon Kings, and Alchemicals, all function at different power levels using different mechanics and each have their own core books. Which means in order to properly run the world you need a literal bookshelf full of material. Huge amounts of information was printed that was only useful for Solar gameplay, or only for Dragon-Blooded. There are literally hundreds of pages of nothing but different charm sets for the various types of exalted, when there should ultimately only be one single charm set that everyone uses with slightly different costs.

[Bartmanhomer]

Maybe this game wasn't meant to be balanced. I can't speak for older and newer editions because I never played it. But I can say this: 3.5 have so many flaws and problems.

[Cosi]

The Fighter ought to have, at a minimum, all of the skill-based capabilities of the Aristocrat class, and also some sort of 'leadership style' mechanic like the Ranger's combat styles

That sounds more like "the Fighter should not exist, and should instead be replaced with a Marshal". Which, sure, but you're still binning the Fighter.


Unkillable TO monstrosities are a world-building problem, because they render the contribution of millions of people irrelevant and produce world-building distortions.

No one said "unkillable TO monstrosities". There is a wide, wide, range between "mundane" and "TO". Indeed, that range is pretty much all of fantasy, particularly modern fantasy.

In any case, the notion that very powerful people make other people's stories irrelevant is simply absurd. Consider Shadowrun. In Shadowrun the PCs are somewhere between street thugs and low-tier superhumans and they run around doing jobs that range from "corporate espionage" to "terrorism". And in the background of the setting there are megacorps and nation-states that have political, military, and economic power vastly in excess of what the PCs can hope to wield. And yet no one considers Shadowrun campaigns meaningless.

What's more, having high level mages that do world-shaking things isn't really in conflict with mundane characters, because mundane characters aren't going to be doing world-shaking things since the mundane humans whose capabilities they are constrained to don't do that. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were powerful leaders, but they still conquered only portions of Eurasia. What's more, they did so at the head of powerful empires and in command of might armies, and giving PCs access to those tools is going to let them change the setting whether they have magic or not. Putting a player with even rudimentary knowledge of history and human development in charge of an empire is going to change the setting unrecognizably even if their character has no magic.


Malazan, which is explicitly based on D&D, is a world-building disaster of untold proportions that rob its storytelling of any meaning because nonsensical fiat things happen one after another and there is no coherency.

No more so than Game of Thrones or other similarly complex low-power settings. Malazan is over three million words. That's an enormous amount of stuff to keep straight regardless of how powerful the stuff is. I'll certainly grant that the story is complicated, but there are rules, and it (mostly) does follow them.


Honestly, many of the higher-level abilities, including teleport, should be thrown out. Not wholesale, but they should be rare abilities useable one or two times per campaign, not daily. Or if you're going to have them, you have to have a limited world-building timeframe like Wheel of Time does because the proliferation of such abilities is not compatible with traditional fantasy medieval stasis.

The notion that the campaign setting should be in stasis in the first place is a pretty weird one. Of course it's going to change, that's the whole reason you have a campaign. And the changes brought on by magic are not incomprehensibly hard to reckon with, they're almost all analogous to relatively small advances in technology. teleport is a big deal for the PCs, but it's not all that impressive for a society. It just doesn't actually move all that much stuff. You can't move an army with teleport, and you can't supply a city with only supplies brought by teleport.

It's not even the dominant assumption in fantasy any more, really. I don't think that in the past year I've read a single book that was set in a world with enforced medieval stasis and no major magic. Even The First Law, which is a pretty direct LotR riff in many ways has gunpowder showing up and changing the calculus of war and an empire built around supporting the needs of its magic users.

[Hackulator]

I mean look, in pretty much every high fantasy series of books that exists, the magic users are just better than everyone else. Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Shannara, Mistborn, The Belgariad (might be digging a bit deep with that one), the list goes on and on and people with powerful magic are almost always stronger than people without it. This is just a fact of the genre.

[Jack_Simth]

No you're not. Those classes were given as proof of concept that you can balance "uses a sword" and "uses magic". You can then adjust the power of those classes to be equal to whichever other classes you care about (or vice versa). So the onus is on you to show that either:

A) The identity of the Warblade and the Warlock is intrinsically tied to their current power level, and the classes would become unrecognizable if the power of their abilities was increased to be on par with a Wizard.
B) It is literally impossible to write a list of maneuvers or invocations that can produce characters on a power level comparable to the Wizard.

Those claims are very much not obvious, but I invite you to explain why you believe at least one of them (or something similar). We know of balanced subsets of the game that individually have whatever properties we might want. It's on the anti-balance people to show that those subsets can't be extended to an acceptable breadth without losing the properties we care about.

A couple of things....

1) "You can't do X without Y" is one form of a null hypothesis. They're fundamentally unproveable. They're disprovable, though, by finding a counterexample. The classic null hypothesis is "unicorns don't exist." That hypothesis cannot be proven - there will always be somewhere you haven't looked, and to prove it, you would need to look everywhere (sorry, that should be "everywhere at once", because unicorns could potentially move). However, it's opposite is straightforward to prove: Provide one for examination (alive or dead, doesn't matter). Onus is on the one who's seeing unicorns. A balanced version of 3.5 that neither forces players into wuxia or anime levels (at a minimum), nor removes options from the game? That's a unicorn. Doesn't exist.
2) I'm not saying you can't produce a balanced game. I'm saying I don't believe you can balance 3.5 without doing at least one of two things:
a) Removing options from the game (reducing it's breadth)
b) Boosting the mundanes to a point where I'd call them wuxia or anime.

To prove me wrong, all you need to do is produce such a game. Try. Please. I'd like to be proven wrong. I've seen quite a few attempts, but so far all have fit into one or more of three categories:
1) Failed at providing a balanced game (in which case, the other two don't matter).
2) Reduced the breadth of the game via removing options (usually a rather lot).
3) Boosted the mundanes up to the point of wuxia or anime - at which point, I can't in good conscience call them mundanes anymore.
Pick any 2, and I've probably seen a balance attempt for 3.5 that doesn't reasonably fit either category. I've yet to see a 3.5 fix that doesn't fit any of the three.



I think you can have a game where all of the options are available, but you can't reasonable use them all in the same group. So effectively you need to label abilities to be able to determine if an option is appropriate.
So something like "Here's the teir-1 rules for the tier-1 table; here's the tier-2 rules for the tier-2 table; ..." and so on?

You're still removing breadth from the game - you'll never end up with the conversation between the wizard and the fighter.



I'll admit I don't know what the ''breath" of the game is....

You missed the "d". It's "breadth" - in this context it means "range": how many different things you can do with it.

Well, ok, if this ''point'' exists, then simply don't go there.
Trouble is, you fall short of balance when using the "weaken the casters" approach if you don't go to the point of removing things you can model.


Sure, though really this should be it's own thread.

Great! Show me your counterexample.

Mostly, though: Tables find their own balance point, and then the game works. The unbalanced bits of the game mostly only matter for shuffled groups or new players (also not nice meanie people, but you shouldn't play for long with those anyway). Shuffled groups, because then you've got folks accustomed to one balance point mixed in with folks accustomed to another; there will be conflict on balance as a result. New players, because they haven't found the table's balance point yet, and you'll get folks accidentally (usually) overshadowing others. In theory, if the game were balanced, neither scenario would be a problem... but from what I've seen, it wouldn't look much like 3.5 anymore.

[Cosi]

I mean look, in pretty much every high fantasy series of books that exists, the magic users are just better than everyone else. Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Shannara, Mistborn, The Belgariad (might be digging a bit deep with that one), the list goes on and on and people with powerful magic are almost always stronger than people without it. This is just a fact of the genre.

Yes, that is why "mundane" is a character concept that limits you to less than 10th level, and high level martial characters (like Thor) get upgrades which give them magic (like Thor).


Boosted the mundanes up to the point of wuxia or anime - at which point, I can't in good conscience call them mundanes anymore.

Who cares? "Mundane" is a low level concept. This complaint is exactly as valid as complaining that eventually Wizards stop being apprentice Wizards.


To prove me wrong, all you need to do is produce such a game.

No, I just need to prove it possible. And I did. So again, do you have any reason to suspect you couldn't produce additional classes at the balance level of the Warblade and Warlock? I'm looking for any argument at all for your position. The only "argument" you presented is to conflate this with a scientific experiment so you can claim your burden of proof is "literally nothing" and the other side's is "an entire functioning game". If you continue to do that, you will cease being a relevant part of the conversation, because you are making arguments that no reasonable person is going to bother engaging with.

EDIT: To expand on this slightly, the point you're making isn't about the kind of argument, it's about the framing. Consider that instead of "you can balance the game without reducing it's breadth"/"you can't do that", you could phrase things as "you can re-write any content in 3e at a level compatible with the Warblade"/"you can't do that". The claims aren't fundamentally different, you're just phrasing yours in a way that lets you neglect to provide any argument for it. And, unsurprisingly, refusing to provide an argument for your position leaves people unpersuaded by your position. So what's the counterexample to that hypothesis? Or the related hypothesis "you can move the Warblade to any power level". Or maybe this isn't a scientific experiment and you can just present some arguments like everyone else does.