My Current Final Answer to Caster/Martial Disparity

[Cluedrew]

So I participated in many very long threads on this topic. I have even spun up some of my own to try and focus on particular sub-parts of it. I was thinking about creating another one but I realized that I don't have another idea. Baring a new revelation I think I am done and I have my answer. It has taken many revisions to get here and it may someday change again, but for now here is my answer.

One last thing before we get started. What is Caster/Martial Disparity? Basically it is any systematic imbalance between characters that uses magic and those that don't. A power option between one caster and one martial does not count (unless there is only one of either). Now the definition of magic is a bit fuzzy especially with things like sufficiently advanced technology, but one bit of fuzziness I would like to cut out of this thread is non-mystic fantastic abilities are not magic. I am going by the look-and-feel view of magic, not the world-building one.* As a simple example, for the purposes of this thread someone who is twice as strong as a human could be just because they trained that hard is not magic.

Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.

Game Check: A lot of concepts have some narrative components that don't translate to games very well. The classic example is that in many stories casters are held back by some story constraint. Such as a need to avoid attention or some global balance concern that is even bigger than the events of the story. How do you represent these limits in a game? Well I could try to come up with some solutions either you need to come up with ways to transport them into the game or you have to not rely on them.

Implementation: Here is a big blob of do all the usual implementation, balancing and play-testing work you would use while working on any new content. There is quite a lot of thinks packed in here, but it is so completely generic I am not going to go into detail about it.

Expanding Abilities: Again this is kind of generic, make sure when you add content later things are still balanced. But there is a special note here because such extreme different types of abilities and power sources there is often a structural difference between them. Which means one can be much easier to expand than the other. Don't just expand the easy one as that will increase its power and leave the other behind. Traditionally this is the caster to getting access to more and more magic while the martial's abilities remain locked to the core game's skill system.

And that is it. All of these could be unpacked or add more examples (most would be casters outstripping martials, but this can go either way) but I think this should get across the high level idea. There are related issues like world-building around new abilities people have, but ultimately I think the process is the same for mystic and non-mystic fantastic abilities, its just your starting seed is a little different.

To summarize this entire thing if you want to solve caster/martial disparity you will have to work at it from the very beginning – before any actual rules are created – to the very end – to the release of the last expansion.

Magic is a word that means a lot of different things in different contexts. For instance how people say something is magic when they don't understand it or the many historic definitions I have learned while studying its past. But there are two that are relevant here and they can be hard to tell apart.

The Literary Definition of Magic: Magic is anything explicitly added to the world that does not exist in real life; from classic wizardry to advanced technology to superhuman conditioning. This definition is mostly concerned with setting and world-building.

The Aesthetic Definition of Magic: Magic is anything that has the same aesthetics (look-and-feel) of magic in traditional sources such as fork-lore and mythology. This definition is even harder to pin down exactly and is more concerned with imagery.

Now you can create balanced characters across the caster/martial divide with both views of magic. Although the first gives you an exact cap on power level. But ultimately I'm using the second because I think that is the one most people are actually referring to. Although these same guidelines can be used if you want to use the first, but it will limit what you can do on the martial side.

[NigelWalmsley]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. No one asks "how do I balance Monks and Rangers" or "how do I balance archery and TWF" (or at least, not with the same furor and frequency). The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work. Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

[Psyren]

Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.


I think there is a missing step here, which is for the GM to define what "balance" means to them. Should the casters and martials be able to solve all the exact same problems? If yes, are they using the same mechanical methods, with the same potential drawbacks? Or if no, does "balance" mean you're bringing different specialists to the team that are equally useful but in different ways?

To use your own example of the caster making a pocket dimension while the martial smashes/cuts his way into one - can the martial's technique be dispelled or counterspelled? Is he making something that doesn't yet exist, or is he merely opening a door to something that someone else had to create? Can he control any of the properties of the pocket that he is accessing? Can he control who gains access after he's opened that door, including the duration it stays open?


Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

Not to mention, most of the audience (outside of message boards) may not care that much, as long as the disparity isn't too egregious for the game to function. That could be folded into "reward" however.

[Cluedrew]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. […] The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work.Agreed to the first but I disagree that balancing things is pretty simple. I think balancing a game is an incredibly complex task and you need special tips for everything you might want to balance. Especially when you want to have very diverse options that connect their flavour and mechanics together. But I think there are "special tips" - balance considerations that are particularly important to keep in mind - for any given balance topic.


I think there is a missing step here, which is for the GM to define what "balance" means to them.GM/System designer actually, but it is a good point either way. And these is how balanced everything is. Is within 5% of perfect balance (under the bold assumption we can measure balance as a percentage) good enough or do we need within 0.1%?

I am trying to focus on issues that seem particularly troublesome for caster/martial and I'm not sure if this is a particular issue for that. Do you think it is?

[Psyren]

GM/System designer actually, but it is a good point either way. And these is how balanced everything is. Is within 5% of perfect balance (under the bold assumption we can measure balance as a percentage) good enough or do we need within 0.1%?

I am trying to focus on issues that seem particularly troublesome for caster/martial and I'm not sure if this is a particular issue for that. Do you think it is?

My take is that this is an easy problem to solve, if that is truly your main priority - let everyone do the same things the same ways. So the martial who "cuts through to a pocket dimension" can be dispelled or counterspelled, his ability is detectable as magic, has limits on when he learns that power, has slots that govern how many times per day he can do it, it provokes when used etc. This ability would thus be able to be perfectly balanced with an equivalent spell.

Of course, the drawback to doing it that way is that you end up with homogeneity. If you want balance without that, that's where things start to get more complicated.

[Asisreo1]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

Wizard's weaknesses are basically anything that does alot of damage or gets into melee, other spellcasters are big because a wizard usually won't have the necessary proficiency in the saves; best bet for them would be counterspell (a resource) and pray.

Clerics, in general, don't get great defensive options and they have to go into specific subclasses to get these defenses; their weakness would be melee martials and spellcasters. They don't have access to shield or counterspell. (Though they have shield of faith, that doesn't help as a reaction.)

Druids can actually be a psuedo-half-caster by means of Moon's Wild Shape. The problem is that this doesn't give them proficiency in dexterity nor anyway to work around that. You can't cast spells in wildshape but you can continue to concentrate on one, meaning you'll probably just be using 1 concentration spell any given combat encounter. A land druid is the actual full caster version of the druid. They still don't have nearly the options that a wizard does in terms of spellcasting, and that's their compromise. Their weakness would be ranged combatants and spellcasters. They don't have access to shield or counterspell.

Bards are a mostly support class. They have so little in terms of defense outside of their spells and cutting words or bonus proficiencies depending on your subclass. Even with those, their weakness would be melee fighter. They don't have shield.

Sorcerers are very squishy. Going Draconic can help but ultimately a person getting into melee against a sorcerer will slap them around. They have unorthodox saving throws, too. Their weakness is mind controlling spellcasters, evocations spellcasters, and martials (especially melee).

Warlocks can get good defensive options with their invocations but they're effectively a martial in attack pattern since they mostly rely on EB. Their weakness is melee martials, though.

[KineticDiplomat]

And there is, of course, the best answer: don't play D&D. Play a game that isn't about casters gaining the ability to shape the world and defy physics every six seconds while martials hit things somewhat harder with their sword.

Trying to balance D&D to be anything other than high maguc power fantasy is a bit of a losing effort, because it IS high magic power fanstasy. And wouldn't you know it, half dragons with divine lineage who can literally twist dimensional reality are better at that sort of thing than people with slightly bigger swords.

On top of which, D&D is a bit of a crap system to begin with. It was the first big one, but being first doesn't mean best for all time. Concepts have moved on, gameplay has moved on, and you don't have to deal with someone trying to mathematically perfect what a level 13 half devil caster does versus a level 13 human monk, because there are plenty of games not about that. There are some that even take the perfectly sensible step of not letting you be nigh-unto-a-god (and some that, by focusing on being a god very specifically, do it far better.)

Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.

[Psyren]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

Not that controversial given that you're talking about 5e specifically :smallsmile: While some disparity still exists there, which grows at higher levels like in most other iterations of D&D, the gap is small enough that most players don't care.



Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.

"Finding a better game" isn't really the challenge, folks on this subforum alone will suggest dozens. The challenge rather is getting your friends to play the "better game" with you. That's a big reason why so many folks turn to modifying D&D instead of abandoning it.

[Ignimortis]

I think martials are fairly well balanced with casters. I know, controversial, but let me explain: most casters have very little in the ways of defense.

The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).

[KineticDiplomat]

I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

[Jay R]

The easiest way to balance martial and casters is to play at levels where they are more-or-less balanced. In original D&D, the assumption was that once you reach 9th or 10th level, the game is pretty much over. The rules say that you stop adventuring, clear out an area, the Fighter builds a keep, and becomes a Lord. He* raises an army and fights other armies.

The problem isn’t balance. The problem is high-level characters. Once you can easily sack a dungeon and slay a dragon, the game of Dungeons and Dragons is over.

[Psyren]

I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

For many of us, "math" isn't a dirty word :smallwink:
Kidding aside, I do understand your point - there are certainly systems that are easier to pick up and GM than 5th edition is (and even that is arguably the easiest edition of D&D to pick up and learn in... well, ever) - but ease of adoption is only one selling point for a game. Being able to resolve many types of conflict with defined rules and calculations is not a bug, but a feature for numerous playgroups. I personally think 5e is as "rules light" as D&D is likely to get, though 6e could always prove me wrong.


The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).

I don't think he was bringing up their weaknesses in a PvP sense. Rather, it shows that even if those casters have more capabilities, they have limited resources with which to use those capabilities, and not having martials around (or trying to steal all their thunder if they are around) means their already limited resources get taxed even more heavily. (Remember, 5e has no bonus spells, and the concentration mechanic also limits the buffs they can maintain concurrently quite heavily.)


The easiest way to balance martial and casters is to play at levels where they are more-or-less balanced. In original D&D, the assumption was that once you reach 9th or 10th level, the game is pretty much over. The rules say that you stop adventuring, clear out an area, the Fighter builds a keep, and becomes a Lord. He* raises an army and fights other armies.

The problem isn’t balance. The problem is high-level characters. Once you can easily sack a dungeon and slay a dragon, the game of Dungeons and Dragons is over.

If this were truly the intent though, they wouldn't be printing high-level material - monsters, spells and items for characters well above 10th level. If balance is your be-all and end-all then stopping at those mid-levels makes sense, but that should be a playgroup choice rather than a system limitation.

[Zarrgon]

I think I might have two more concepts to add:


Game World Power Level More then anything else this creates Caster/Martial Disparity. Very quickly casters gain the ability to alter reality....but then they adventure in a dull mundane world made out of sticks and mud. Anything the makes the game world not like 1000 AD Earth. There is this odd obsession of wanting things to be just like historical Earth, but at the same time having reality warping magic. Even a simple concept of better saves resistances works. Though this leads to:

The 800 Pound Gorilla The big one no one even wants to acknowledge or talk about: creating the disparity by taking magics side. Or more simply, the bias for magic. And this is huge and very wide spread. Even hint that magic might have some sort of limit will get people to freak out. They will demand all magic must be free to warp all reality always. And this is not just about pure mechanical rules, but it's also about play styles. When combat happens and, amazingly yet again, the caster characters never get seriously attacked. The same way that, amazingly, any event or encounter ignores the casters. This is the classic: Everyone will laugh and say 'martial suck' when a martial character can't fight a ghost, but every one will scream insanely if the world has even a single anti magical area as it's wrong to negatively effect the caster characters.


And need less to say, putting the two together makes things even worse.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

On top of which, D&D is a bit of a crap system to begin with. It was the first big one, but being first doesn't mean best for all time. Concepts have moved on, gameplay has moved on, and you don't have to deal with someone trying to mathematically perfect what a level 13 half devil caster does versus a level 13 human monk, because there are plenty of games not about that. There are some that even take the perfectly sensible step of not letting you be nigh-unto-a-god (and some that, by focusing on being a god very specifically, do it far better.)

Want to get past a horrible design flaw in a game half a century old? Play a better game.


I have found that a willingness to GM a not D&D game goes a long way to getting everyone at the table to admit they really don’t like D&D that much. And often they’ll start floating ideas of their own.

The best part? Because most games have avoided the pitfalls of D&D’s overly specific math requirements, GMing many other systems requires little more than a basic grasp of the rules and the willingness to tell a world. Most people run screaming from GMing because D&D makes it a hideous labor...but it doesn’t have to be.

The extent to which other systems are obviously better than D&D at doing [thing] and how people obviously hate/are tired of D&D and D&D is this clunky old relic that is obviously outclassed by the new hotness is vastly overblown.

You want to run a game about playing a character of godlike power and think that D&D is crap for that because it's an overly-mathy game with tons of fiddly bits and very little inter-class balance at high levels? Well, guess what? Turns out that if you focus on the worst points of a game and pretend other games do it better, everything sounds like crap!

Amber Diceless is a shallow game where the numbers are purely deterministic, the main mechanic is fast-talking the DM, and the GM is lucky if two PCs ever spend more than the first ten minutes of the campaign in the same Shadow. Exalted is a pretentious game where you'll quickly get sick of names and descriptions generated using the Ultimate Lotus Flowery Language Technique, solar exalted are always and universally Better Than You, and combat is more rocket tag than D&D ever could be. Nobilis is an ultra-high-concept game where you basically go through character creation twice and then play Exalted with less mechanical rigor and less adherence to internal consistency than a recent Doctor Who season. Scion is a fairly generic game with all the paint-by-numbers problems of a late-stage White Wolf game, a total lack of target numbers anywhere in the book, and less of a fleshed-out setting than the Greek gods' Wikipedia page. And so on and so forth.

The idea that everything besides D&D is balanced, simple, easy to GM, etc. and switching systems will magically fix your problem is the same kind of myopic "D&D is a perfect universal game and you can run anything with it with a bit of tweaking" take from the opposite perspective, and you rarely hear opposition to those sorts of "[Game] rules, D&D droolz" statements because lots of people start with D&D, don't like it, switch to a new system or systems they like better, and start evangelizing, and you basically never hear from (A) people who start with D&D, try other systems, and end up going back to D&D not because new systems are scary but because they actually like it better or (B) people who start with something obscure, don't like it, switch to D&D, and start evangelizing that.


For many of us, "math" isn't a dirty word :smallwink:
Kidding aside, I do understand your point - there are certainly systems that are easier to pick up and GM than 5th edition is (and even that is arguably the easiest edition of D&D to pick up and learn in... well, ever) - but ease of adoption is only one selling point for a game. Being able to resolve many types of conflict with defined rules and calculations is not a bug, but a feature for numerous playgroups. I personally think 5e is as "rules light" as D&D is likely to get, though 6e could always prove me wrong.

Indeed. For all that people give D&D a lot of crap about having too-complicated and excessive math, it's incredibly solid at the low-mid levels in every edition and in 3e it's both more solid at more levels and provides the kind of "casual realism" that a bunch of other games wish they could. 3e D&D hangs together much better than any White Wolf game, for instance...and that says very little about the talent and competence of 3e's main design team (which was considerable, don't get me wrong) and much more about just how bad White Wolf was at math. :smallamused:

Personally, I'd say that (leaving out all the rules-light games with trivial math) only Shadowrun 4e and GURPS come close to 3e's solidity, and while those games' math are much better in many areas, the fact that Shadowrun (A) has Matrix rules that are just totally borked and (B) has a magic/tech/mundane balance triangle in theory but is nicknamed "Magicrun" for a reason, and GURPS (A) has point value assignments that break down when you try to do the genre-mixing that's a major selling point of the system and (B) is more of a build-your-own-game system than a game system with a higher barrier to entry on the GM side, mean that D&D holds together better on the whole.

[Xervous]

The kitchen sink design of D&D has hamstrung it somewhat in providing comparable progressions across the board. I deem it no failure of the system, merely a demonstration of the good old garbage in equaling garbage out.

The quintessential fighter is a static, dull, incompetent concept that tends to read off more like a mook template than an actual player class. In a game with multiple modes of player engagement, the fighter only being able to put numbers on the damage scoreboard is a facet that stems from the general concept. If the game is all about punching things and taking their stuff he’s in line to be the star of the show, but cast in a more diverse plot it’s painful how much a one trick pony he is.

The concept is further limiting in that it does not allow for progression comparable to other archetypes. While mobility, information gathering and other plot interacting effects accrue in the hands of other classes the fighter is just a numerically scaled up version of his lower level self.

If D&D wasn’t burdened by the weight of tradition and could shave off the stubs of classes that got stretched from a 1-5 progression to their 1-20 presentations and replace them with concepts that touched upon more modes of involvement while having thematic paths to grow to match the assumed scope of adventures.

Fighter and co. suck because their concepts are incomplete and not fully applicable to the range of play seen in D&D. Build a class off a good concept and scale it properly and then a discussion on disparity between the unique subsystems by which the various classes interact with the world will be able to start.

[Willie the Duck]

Balancing casters and martials isn't really a special problem. No one asks "how do I balance Monks and Rangers" or "how do I balance archery and TWF" (or at least, not with the same furor and frequency). The reality is that balancing things is pretty simple. You figure out what balance means, and you iterate on your design until you hit your target. You don't need special tips for balancing casters and martials, you just need to be willing to do the work. Most people aren't, but that's because designing games takes a lot of work and isn't all that rewarding.

Although not a special problem, I think balancing magic to not-magic is decidedly harder of a task. If nothing else because there are so many spells, so many different problems against which they are leveraged in D&D (especially compared to archery and twf, which are just alternate avenues towards HP damage on opponents), and very early on in the game the designers decided to give away vast swaths of all things possible to a couple of magical classes (an alternate version of the game where different types of magic were more stringently siloed would be easier to balance than one where a single wizard can solve combat, dungeon-crawling, transport, knowledge, and social issues).

[Asisreo1]

Not that controversial given that you're talking about 5e specifically :smallsmile: While some disparity still exists there, which grows at higher levels like in most other iterations of D&D, the gap is small enough that most players don't care.

Okay, when I wrote this, I didn't realize I was on the general RPG forum. Thought this was tagged under 5e lol.

[Asisreo1]

The point that you have missed is that D&D isn't a PvP game.

The disparity is not in how well every class can kill the other or even (in 5e) combat parity, because 5e was designed around HP damage as the main way to win any combat. The disparity is that a Wizard can do twelve different things out of combat that would be useful, while a Fighter can do two, all of which can be done by the Wizard on the same level or better, and at the same time the Wizard isn't much worse than the Fighter in combat, just somewhat worse (and sometimes even better).
Okay, it was obvious I was talking about 5e, but a lack of defense is not something purely PvP, in any system. No matter what system you run, there's bruisers and archers and skirmishers and spellcasters as NPC's. These are going to appear as opposition to your party and it's important to see these weaknesses.

Out of combat, of course it depends on the system. Usually, though, the melee-er gets to bypass traps and react against the environmental hazards better than a spellcaster which usually doesn't make the damage-reducing roll and usually has less HP to spare when they take the damage. In this way, fighters are still good for the defensive aspect of the out-of-combat game. This does greatly depend on how much out-of-combat is developed anyways.

[Cluedrew]

My take is that this is an easy problem to solve, if that is truly your main priority - let everyone do the same things the same ways.Well my main priority is to design a fun role-playing game. Balance on the level of everyone can make a meaningful contribution most of the time contributes to that but so does diversity so the easy way out doesn't work. Nor does the other one some others mentioned actually.

Why I just don't play D&D: I already don't play D&D, not usually at least, its not that I hate it but it just doesn't mesh with the types of games I enjoy so why use it? Really I just mine it for examples and metaphors because no one would understand if I tried to compare a practitioner of the way of the winding river and a wrama.


I think I might have two more concepts to add: [...] Game World Power Level [...] The 800 Pound Gorilla [or pro-magic bias]Pro-magic bias is one that get mentioned and I have butted my head against before. I'm not sure if the setting power level is a problem for caster/martial disparity on its own but I have seen it combine with pro-magic bias where people will happily handwave magic but demand world building for any physically themed changes to the world.

So I guess question your biases should be in there but unfortunately I don't really have a process for that.


Fighter and co. suck because their concepts are incomplete and not fully applicable to the range of play seen in D&D. Build a class off a good concept and scale it properly and then a discussion on disparity between the unique subsystems by which the various classes interact with the world will be able to start.Yeah this is the Balance Concepts thing, I have proposed various visions of higher level ideas of the fighter (like the super-human, the solider or the noble) but people rarely like them or suggest their own. There just seems to be a blank spot there that people don't want to fill in. That is one of the mysteries I haven't been able to solve.

[Pex]

A spellcaster plane hopping and creating demi planes does not mean a warrior needs to be able to punch the veil between worlds and do the same thing. The warrior is then just a spellcaster by another name. The warrior should be doing his own special wow things. It could be just as fantastical such as jumping across a 200 ft wide ravine, or if you need more verisimilitude he can climb down one side 500 ft deep then climb the other in an hour without risk of failure. The spellcaster can fly. The warrior can jump 30 ft up, grapple a flying enemy, and bring him down to the ground. The spellcaster brings someone dead 5 days back to life. The warrior does CPR bringing back to life someone dead for 5 minutes.

I'm in the raise the warrior camp to bring balance if you need it. They can do similar things as spellcasters in some cases but total quid pro quo is not needed. Spellcasters are entitled to do their own wow special things.

[SunderedWorldDM]

Alternatively, you could make magic and martial characters more cross-compatible within your campaign. Your fighter can delve into the crypt to find a magical schema to forge the Blade of Dusk again, and follow it up with tense negotiation with the last surviving Runespeaker to get Urgdod, the Rune of Icy Death, so that you can inscribe it onto the Blade of Dusk. Then after you've gotten that business sorted, fight through the cults of Yormunsk to enter a planar portal to show the demon lord who killed your parent's who's boss.

Your martial characters are capable of doing epic, badass magical things. You can just give them the narrative impetus to do so. Especially if you flavor your martial's advancement in terms of reputation. Your 3rd level fighter is the "Prizewinner of the Champion's Arena" now, and everyone in the area will recognize them on sight as such. Once they get to level 5, they are "the best duelist in the realm", and they can use that reputation to secure audience with nobles.

Martial characters can feel as awesome and epic as spellcasters do. You just need to escape the confines of mechanical thinking and consider the scale of their story instead.

[Rhyltran]

Again, as I mentioned in another thread, this isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be and many people over blow the problem by their own biases towards the subject. A lot of people claim the Fighter can't teleport, fly, go invisible, or handle situations the same way the wizard can.. except.. of course this isn't true and the Fighter can do all of these things. In a single game with all the books available and with access to magical items/gear/optimization/prestige classes.. it isn't hard to build a fighter that can handle any problem that exists out there. It might require more system mastery than the wizard and sure the wizard might be able to do the same thing (even easier) but at the end of the day a Fighter can still solve all the problems that the game presents to him. Since the discussion is literally high level play we have access to prestige classes that can raise a class up a tier or two we have access to 760,000 gold of WBL.

The problem only comes when people want their Fighter to do everything a wizard can without the use of magical items but in the end DnD doesn't support that kind of play (which is why wealth by level is a thing.) It's also why, especially for martial characters, other source books (and online resources) should be open. Once this is the case and the players have some experience, it isn't hard to build a viable character no matter what starting base you originate from. Their are so many ways to boost attributes, beef up saves, get immunity to level drain, have access to true seeing, a mode of transportation, a way to fly, and so much more that just about any problem can truly be solved outside of player PvP.

The true difficulty comes with balancing encounters for higher level players. Regardless what they start as. When a monk can be built to solo the elder evils, everyone can break the game with enough know how.

[KineticDiplomat]

No, not every game is better than D&D. Just a great number of them, certainly enough that you can find a better way to play virtually any story type than D&D, any combat type, any power level, any era. D&D's ability to be just-above-bad at everything doesn't mean you should play it instead of games that are good at things you want.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

No, not every game is better than D&D. Just a great number of them, certainly enough that you can find a better way to play virtually any story type than D&D, any combat type, any power level, any era. D&D's ability to be just-above-bad at everything doesn't mean you should play it instead of games that are good at things you want.

There are many games that claim to do certain settings/themes/combat styles/etc. better than D&D, but this certainly doesn't always hold.

Riddle of Steel claims to be the best at intricate Medieval close quarters tactical combat, but in practice it falls down hard when you have more than two combatants at a time and gives you very few actually mechanically meaningful options. And that's its only claim to fame; even fans try to ignore the clunky and obviously unbalanced character creation, the sketchy and deliberately unbalanced magic system, and so on.

GURPS claims to be the best at statting out characters in detail in any time period or genre, but "shoot dude with fire" and "send message to faraway dude" spells in the various magic supplements strongly assume a generic low-magic Medieval European fantasy setting and point values break down if you try to make such characters in urban fantasy settings where guns and cell phones are a thing. This is somewhat alleviated by there being tons of GURPS resource books out there for different settings/genres/eras/etc., but each one you add makes the GM's job harder and makes the likelihood of mis-pointing-for-the-current-setting rise proportionally.

Shadowrun claims to be the best at providing players with consistent magical physics and role-limited magicians, but bound spirits > you and you can enchant motorcycles to go significant fractions of the speed of sound and break both the setting and the vehicle rules. And I hope you weren't planning to play a gish type, enchanter, or other kind of magician, because they suck or don't exist, and let's not even talk about the poor technomancer who gets the short end of the magic and decking sticks.

White Wolf claims to be the best at running "mixed supernatural" groups like a vampire/werewolf/mage/ghost teamup, but every single splat was incompatible with every other in ways both dramatic and subtle, and White Wolf couldn't math their way out of a paper bag with a GPS and a lightsaber.

Meanwhile, the D&D engine is versatile enough that the 3e third-party publishers gave us dozens of novel settings in dozens of genres during the OGL boom, 5e third-party publishers have tons of genre-mashup and D&D-conversion products up on DM's Guild, and 4e third-party publishers...existed, I presume. Are any of those somewhat-tweaked D&D variants going to be as good at handling a given genre-tone-power-era combination as a game dedicated to that particular one? Not in the slightest, obviously (but then again, neither will "universal" systems like GURPS or Fate). But D&D is much closer to "halfway-decent at anything" than "second-worst at everything" than people like yourself give it credit for.

[Psyren]

Well my main priority is to design a fun role-playing game. Balance on the level of everyone can make a meaningful contribution most of the time contributes to that but so does diversity so the easy way out doesn't work. Nor does the other one some others mentioned actually.

Why I just don't play D&D: I already don't play D&D, not usually at least, its not that I hate it but it just doesn't mesh with the types of games I enjoy so why use it? Really I just mine it for examples and metaphors because no one would understand if I tried to compare a practitioner of the way of the winding river and a wrama.

I was only using D&D for examples too. My main point is system-agnostic, and could be summed up as follows:

When you're designing your system, you have to decide not just what a magic-user and a non-magic-user can do, but how they do it. And part of that "how" includes the advantages and drawbacks to each approach. All of those things ultimately play a role in "balance."

As one (again, system-agnostic) example - if a spellcaster can use magic to unlock a door in under six seconds, while a thief with his lockpicks will take a full minute to do the same thing, that is clearly unbalanced in favor of the caster, and there's no reason to go with the thief because the caster's approach is objectively better. But that's comparing the two approaches in a vacuum; in reality the true obstacle may have additional factors to consider. Maybe the caster can only do that 3 times, but there are 7 locked doors the party needs to get through. Or maybe the caster can do it all 7 times, but at the cost of the lightning he needs to help fight whatever is behind Door 5. Or casting that 7 times makes him too tired/drained to recall everyone back out in an emergency. Or perhaps he has enough unlocking spells to get the party through every door, but they all require a loud magic word that alerts the enemies inside ,while the lockpicks don't. Maybe the spell has more than one, or even ALL of those disdavantages.

Are the two approaches still unbalanced against one another? That is the kind of thing that makes "balance" discussions less straightforward.

[Ignimortis]

Shadowrun claims to be the best at providing players with consistent magical physics and role-limited magicians, but bound spirits > you and you can enchant motorcycles to go significant fractions of the speed of sound and break both the setting and the vehicle rules. And I hope you weren't planning to play a gish type, enchanter, or other kind of magician, because they suck or don't exist, and let's not even talk about the poor technomancer who gets the short end of the magic and decking sticks.

White Wolf claims to be the best at running "mixed supernatural" groups like a vampire/werewolf/mage/ghost teamup, but every single splat was incompatible with every other in ways both dramatic and subtle, and White Wolf couldn't math their way out of a paper bag with a GPS and a lightsaber.


Neither of those claim to do these things. Crossover games have been absolute trash in OWoD and I distinctly remember the authors saying that you probably shouldn't try to do that. NWoD was designed to be crossover-friendly and from what I've heard (never played it myself), it works somewhat well, if the narrative has a reason for all y'all to stick together instead of doing your own stuff.

Meanwhile Shadowrun was always about mages being superior in a way, both morally and mechanically. It's one of the major problems of the game and the setting, really. The GM is supposed to beat mages down with IC tools, but it's poor design and doesn't hold up in the modern editions mechanically. Consistent magical physics were a thing, though - until 5e rolled around and CGL's poorly-paid freelancers messed everything up, but that can be said of many things in 5e (let's not even start with 6e). Before that, though, there were three major rules that couldn't be broken - no resurrection, no fortune-telling/foresight, no teleportation. These three things fix a lot of issues with magic utility by itself, really, and if the fourth was "no direct mind/body control", spellcasting in Shadowrun could've probably been one of the best conceptually.

Oh, and technomancers don't suck if you know how to play them - they're just not "a decker who uses their brain as a deck" and aren't good if played like that.

[Cluedrew]

I'm in the raise the warrior camp to bring balance if you need it. They can do similar things as spellcasters in some cases but total quid pro quo is not needed. Spellcasters are entitled to do their own wow special things.The problem with this in D&D is that there are so few wow special things left that spell-casters haven't got a spell for already. What good is a ranger when you can teleport, a rogue when you can knock or a fighter when you can summon minions? Actually still something, I'm not going that hard on it, but it is still precariously close between the specialist and the wizard who picked up a few spells on the side.

Of course you could pump up the non-casters up to match entirely, but there is a point a which everything starts feeling the same to me if you do that. So my answer is mostly in the raise the warrior (and the scout, doctor, scholar, tracker and diplomat) camp but a bit of put more limits on the caster. Although a lot of that also just comes as part of the restructuring of caster to give it a more distinct feel. But that is a topic in its own right.


The problem only comes when people want their Fighter to do everything a wizard can without the use of magical items but in the end DnD doesn't support that kind of play (which is why wealth by level is a thing.)I know I was just complaining about people rejecting visions of the high level fighter but this is the one I can never quite get behind. Its not out of the question, I've got some characters like that, but a fighter whose strength is "we have taken caster abilities and given you them in the form of equipment" feels like a half-caster beside a fighter who can do the same through training or someone who has a completely different set of abilities through training. I suppose the ultimate solution would be to support multiple kinds of high-level fighters, what a revolutionary idea.

On D&D's Quality: I am happy to hear how other systems handle caster/martial disparity, or how setting and power level effect the issue. This is not about D&D's quality in general please send that to a different thread.

To Psyren: Oh that makes sense. Making everything the same feels like one of those cures worse than the disease things.

[Zarrgon]

The problem with this in D&D is that there are so few wow special things left that spell-casters haven't got a spell for already. What good is a ranger when you can teleport, a rogue when you can knock or a fighter when you can summon minions? Actually still something, I'm not going that hard on it, but it is still precariously close between the specialist and the wizard who picked up a few spells on the side.


This is a big part about my point of having a different world. Before 3E, D&D was full of weird, strange and unknown stuff. But very little of it had hard crunchy mechanical rules: it just existed. Just take doors: An entrance might be blocked by tightly packed tree roots, and you would note that this is not "a door", so knock is useless. But note the martial character can still figure out how to open the lock (the skill even says it can open a puzzle lock, but I wonder how many use that).



more limits on the caster. Although a lot of that also just comes as part of the restructuring of caster to give it a more distinct feel. But that is a topic in its own right.

One of the big things 3E removed, and it has been gone ever since is the negative effects. And all the negative effects really limited casters. It was dangerous for a spellcaster to cast spells in The Abyss, for example....but note most martial things were not effected (they might be climbing a wall of bleeding eye balls...but it's mostly just a wall).


And I'll add the classic bias too: A spellcaster can pick from any spell in any book: should a DM even hint that they might restrict a spell casters spell choices and they will scream and whine and complain. Of course, should any martial character want any martial item, armor or weapon the DM must slam both fists down on the table and say "No"...because martial characters suck.

[Tanarii]

Besides 3e D&D, what other systems particularly suffer from caster / martial imbalance?

I mean, all you really have to do is identify why so many systems get it right, and one particular edition of one particular TRPG got it wrong.

[KineticDiplomat]

@ClueDrew

Fair enough. Two systems off the back of my head for comparison.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay / Dark Heresy / Etc.

Methods of Balance: Serious Consequences, IC Discrimination, Magical Specialization

A better known one.

The universe for these games being what it is, it is more or less a given that continuously flashing your powers around is a great excuse for the GM to abuse you with misfortunes that do not need to be particularly fair. While IC balance methods are always softer than mechanics, the setting promotes their use heavily.

Beyond which, casting/praying for a spell is a potentially dangerous affair. The odds are about one in ten that something will go wrong in a way that is "merely obnoxious" like mutating the nearest living creature (party included), bleeding from your eyes, or going deaf. The odds are about 1/200 that you will get something "really bad", like your head exploding, going blind, or being cast out of grace by your god. And lots of chances to pick up corruption, which effectively ends that character when it gets high enough. Rather than say warriors can jump a mile, or a fireball is no different than a crossbow, they say "yes, this stuff is scary and dangerous and playing with powers no one knows or trusts. The price of power is that everyone fears you, and mechanically you have a real chance to kill yourself or TPK the entire party."

And then there's the simple matter that you can only actually learn in one area/god, and each spell represents a major investment of XP. You might realistically never know more than a handful. No flying-invisible-fireball flinging-magically seducing-better-than-everyone-at-everything wizards here.

Some variety in editions, but the 1/10 minor issue and 1/200 "Oh &*^%" issue in addition to the chance to simply fail your cast is a pretty good benchmarks for making consequences a thing.

Blade of The Iron Throne

Method of Balance: Low-Fantasy Spells, Split between Ritual/Instant Magic, Magic Specialization, Consequences.

Granted, this is a low fantasy game at heart, but since it seeks to emulate Sword & Sorcery pulp it needs to allow world devastating magic. It find the balance like so:

The spell list is almost entirely low fantasy. There are plenty of ominous things like witchfire, mesmerizing folks, and scrying the mists of the future, but virtually nothing along the lines of utility spells or rapid healing. In addition, the effects are appropriately Conan - controlling someone's mind makes them a clearly blank eyed near-zombie moving mindlessly to your demand for instance. Certainly has it's uses, but it isn't a story-bypassing skill.

Further, characters are limited in the fields they can study. Both in terms of little stuff, and in the pre-requisites needed to access big stuff. The more you invest at chargen, the more you know, but since chargen focuses as much on making true weaknesses in characters as strengths, going all in on magic will leave you badly exposed somewhere else.

To add to that, the "instant" spell types are of limited effectiveness and scale. Most of the instant stuff is more supporting cast than lead - cursing someone to reduce their dice pool for instance. This puts the specialist talkers/stalkers/killers in the limelight for most reactionary situations while allowing the magic user to shine during pre-planned events. For impressive stuff, you both need the time and effort to conduct a ritual - again, in the best low fantasy manner, if you're summoning a demon you should expect to have to conduct an actual blood sacrifice - and to specifically know how to pull that ritual off. In many cases that means knowing an Arcane Secret, the acquisition of which is recommended to be a 4 session minimum adventure centered specifically on finding it, with a decent chance of killing the character(s). And then they don't piss around. You want to level a city with a firestorm or rip someone's heart out of their body? Go ahead. Better hope it doesn't go wrong...

...because that can get bad. From simple loss of control of the spell to a demon deciding to kill you all for trying to compel it to your puny mortal wishes. I recall one game where the party wanted to summon a demon to, essentially, bring severe dysentery to a garrison they wanted to infiltrate. The GM said something to the effect of "you can absolutely do this and it will work. Just be aware that if your sorcerer fails this roll, there's a better than even chance this thing is going to rot your flesh on your bones for the impudence, and even if she succeeds, it will demand a price you might not want. And yeah, looking at the dice, it's about even which one you're gonna get."

[Pex]

Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.

[Ignimortis]

Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.

Precisely! I don't understand the common idea that "oh, mages are broken but also persecuted IC because they're broken, so it balances out!" somehow works. Either the player is clever enough to leverage their magic into being broken and unnoticed anyway, or you're just punishing someone who just wanted to play a mage, and usually the latter happens to people who tend to use the least broken magic (commonly combat/damage spells) anyway.

Either way, you have to be antagonistic to a player because they picked a mage, and you have to put extra effort into holding them back, all of which could've been avoided if magic was simply not as good.

[Zarrgon]

Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.

Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

This is what needs to be fixed.

[Democratus]

You could just play game that does a hard correct of this issue. Two revisions of D&D 5e that I like are:

Low Fantasy Gaming - (casting is dark and dangerous)
Middle Earth Adventures 5e - (no PC caster classes)

[NigelWalmsley]

Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

This is what needs to be fixed.

Yes, people should be less willing to punish martials for doing what they're supposed to be doing.

[Cluedrew]

Besides 3e D&D, what other systems particularly suffer from caster / martial imbalance?I haven't even played D&D 3e enough to see it first hand. There were a couple of moments where it became an issue in D&D 5e (not in a game breaking way) and I have heard about problems in Pathfinder, Shadow Run and World of Darkness games. So apparently it is only the largest games?

A survey would be good but perhaps hard to put together. For instance most systems where magic is symmetric with other skills are fine, but that is almost trivially true anyways so is that great example of balance?


Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way.I agree that punishing people for playing their character is a problem, but at the same time that isn't to say there should never be a cost or risk to it. Defining the exact difference between them is tricky but there cases where if you claimed punishment I would disagree.

A very extreme example would be something like people complaining that the tank is running out of HP after taking hits for the rest of the party. Sure you could define tanks who completely negate attacks, but the classic tank that just takes less damage and can take more isn't being punished for filling that role even if they do need a healer eventually. And I could take a step back and talk about fail-forward systems which I have heard actual complains about but more generally the point is I think costs and risks can be used properly.

[Willie the Duck]

Making a character suffer for the audacity of casting a spell is one way to balance spellcasters, but that doesn't make it a good way. A PC should not be punished for doing what it's supposed to be doing. Punished is to mean the character is worse off for doing a Thing - closer to death (loss of hit points), suffer a minus number to defenses, lose the ability to do stuff (lose turns player does nothing, character goes insane) - than if he hadn't bothered to do the Thing in the first place. If something is so powerful you can't stand the player doing it so must make the character suffer then don't allow the ability at all and do something else.


Precisely! I don't understand the common idea that "oh, mages are broken but also persecuted IC because they're broken, so it balances out!" somehow works. Either the player is clever enough to leverage their magic into being broken and unnoticed anyway, or you're just punishing someone who just wanted to play a mage, and usually the latter happens to people who tend to use the least broken magic (commonly combat/damage spells) anyway.

Either way, you have to be antagonistic to a player because they picked a mage, and you have to put extra effort into holding them back, all of which could've been avoided if magic was simply not as good.

D&D certainly had been moving away from the ethos of 'magic is extremely powerful, but wildly inconvenient, readily disrupt-able, and you will be a sitting duck glass cannon who has nothing to do but throw oil 90% of the time except when unleashing said extreme power' for quite some time. Commensurate increasing of martial capability (/reducing the awesomeness of magic) to offset the loosing of these consequences has been something of a slower process.

To the general question of whether getting power along with consequences is a game mechanic that works... boy, sometimes it does, but not often.

GURPS or Hero System, for example, use the general method of 'this power costs points to have access to, and expends some kind of endurance score (and having a higher endurance pool also costs points). If you spend the points to get it, you will have less points to spend on other generally desirable qualities like defense, and perhaps you want to take distrusted:wizard as a penalty for bonus points to spend.' It works... about was well as the rest of the system(s)*. If I was required to point to a model where it works best, I think this would be it.
*And let's be clear, for all the good intentions of the point buy model, both have serious issues with balancing characters. They are easy to game and there are always simply-best-build-options, regardless of the constraints your GM puts up.

A kind of more-stark model of what D&D used to do (and still partially has) is Symbaroum. In it, learning magic causes permanent 'corruption.' Casting magic causes temporary corruption. If your permanent plus temporary corruption exceed a certain limit, you shine like a beacon to beings of corruption (who will come and attack you), and various clergy/inquisitors (who may come and attack/arrest you, as a threat to society*). If your permanent plus temporary corruption exceed a certain higher limit, your character becomes an NPC murder beast.
*At least in this case, they are right. You are a threat to those around you. Unlike something like D&D where there is no mechanical reason why being a spellcaster would actually make you a bad guy.
How did it work? Well, for the most part, it doesn't. What it means is that you just never use magic if there is a possibility of exceeding a threshold. There are various 'Abilities' (the primary build mechanic of the game) you can take that reduce (and more importantly, de-randomize) the amount of corruption you accrue (because of course the first thing you do when you make a consequence-based system is to chip away at it*). So in stead of a spell costing 1d4 temporary corruption, it will cost 1 corruption. So if you know you are 1 corruption away from the inquisitors coming and bashing heads, you just don't cast. They may as well have just made it a X-per-day mechanic and been done with it, because there's no suspense to a line you know you aren't going to cross. Despite really enjoying the flavor of the world they built (and the art!), the game system for this one pretty much is my definition of failed (, frustrating, and punitive) consequence-based limiter.
*Oh, and the Player's Option expansion came out, and lo and behold-an ability which doubles your corruption limits.:smallbiggrin:

In between are systems like Shadowrun, where being a mage means not getting to take part in the fun cyberware collection part of the game, but the powers you get are pretty sweet as well (I think being a caster is actually usually the best strongest answer here. I don't think we ever got much past character creation with this one) or Call of Cthulhu, where learning magic is dangerous to your psyche, but so is everything else you do as a PC.

Overall, I don't want to discount power-for-consequence as a build mechanic, as not even looking at the option walls off a huge amount of design space, yet I don't know of many good implementations, and am generally glad that D&D is moving away from the model (although they really should figure out how to keep martials and casters at some kind of parity in high level play).


I haven't even played D&D 3e enough to see it first hand. There were a couple of moments where it became an issue in D&D 5e (not in a game breaking way) and I have heard about problems in Pathfinder, Shadow Run and World of Darkness games. So apparently it is only the largest games?

A survey would be good but perhaps hard to put together. For instance most systems where magic is symmetric with other skills are fine, but that is almost trivially true anyways so is that great example of balance?

It is rather specific to the situation where:
some player characters are expected to get magic, while others do not (in games where everyone is a mage, like Invisible Suns, the answer to the question 'but what about non-magic users?' is effectively, 'sucks to be them, but you aren't playing as one.'
there is an expectation of balance (combined with the above one, Ars Magica has you play both wizard and nonwizard characters, and the wizards are going to be more powerful, but it is okay because no one is only playing nonwizards).
wizards actually can do more (lots of Fate or PbtA games are such that 'magic' doesn't actually solve more problems.)

[Xervous]

Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

This is what needs to be fixed.

You seem to be conflating a common understanding with a supposed common opinion on the matter.

Mechanically it is understood that the fighter in an absence of a +1 sword fails to play the game against a Shadow. There simply isn’t a debate to be had, this is an observable fact where the fighter cannot affect the Shadow.

Observing these and other martial shortcomings we can declare that certain iconic martials are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game. We can objectively declare that martials suck as presented in the rules. Note that we are still treading wholly upon the RAW of the system and its merits, not an ounce of opinion enters into it yet.

Stepping beyond the rules to the actual handling of the game I personally am not 100% satisfied with the capabilities of the basic concepts like fighter or ranger. I understand that the GM needs to tailor content to avoid pushing some martials to irrelevancy at certain points along the road (avoiding the topic of magic marts being necessary and how deviations from this standard assumption unfairly penalize martials in the common case of 3.5).

The system tells us what sort of works we are playing in. It tells us that martials are such and such. Change the rules or change the system if it doesn’t serve your purpose, but don’t let it be said that people hate martials just for pointing out the system is doing few favors for the fighter within the realm of its standard assumptions.

[KineticDiplomat]

As several posters have hit on, the issue in balancing is usually not one of pure combat math. If it were, many a successful MMORPG could point the way - a series of constraint ordered problems involving damage output, alpha, time in crowd control, resource limitation, and damage absorption or recovery. Usually over a comparatively narrow band of numbers relative to each other. World and social interaction are non-issues by fiat of the code. And if that is what TTRPGs were, why, we could let everyone eat their cake and call it balanced.

The issue is that TTRPGs are NOT MMORPGs. In a TTRPG, magic represents, almost unfailingly, a force that is capable of being deadly in combat, extraordinary at manipulating the world, brilliant at replacing entire skill sets, and fueled by player imagination (and usually a good and thorough ignorance of physics). And if it wasn't that, it wouldn't be magic as envisioned in virtually all TTRPGs- the slightly colored bolts that are basically a crossbow would be very disappointing in terms of thematics and expectations of what magic can do. Indeed, a player interested in that game might decide to just play an MMORPG.

Which means that at some level, you have to acknowledge that casters are going to be handed great power by the nature of the matter. Maybe its X better than martials, maybe its 100 X better, but it is almost always without fail better. Balance derives from imposing limits on that power; even uplifting the martials always leaves them at the earlier "well, he can't FLY - but maybe he can jump really high?" which is still objectively worse than being able to fly for all practical purposes (barring, of course, creating special extraordinary "ha, look if I set the conditions exactly right and the players go exactly according to plan, a martial might have a chance to be equal here" situations).

That limiting isn't "punishing them for daring to play their character", its saying "you were given an objectively better set of tools to use, no, that's not free".

[Xervous]

There’s possibly a great deal of intermingling the definition of martial and mundane that goes on. Heracles is most definitively martial but I doubt many will make the claim that a demigod is mundane. Conversely a grand orator capable of mobilizing loyal legions, himself a cripple far from a stunning combat specimen, is firmly within the bounds of the mundane.

The system drives the overarching patterns and some popular instances tell us that martial does not explicitly come with magic, for general purposes appearing mundane. If the system says you need magic to fly and presents martials as mundane it follows that martials need external help to fly. If the threshold for flight is simply being Exceptional and martials are more widely permitted to be Exceptional, breaking rules of standard physics in manners comparable to how magic users can, no they won’t always need external help to fly.

It’s fine to have NPC classes like 3.5e fighter. It sets the wrong expectations if they aren’t highlighted as such by the developers.

[Max_Killjoy]

Step 0: Decide if you want to balance casters and martials at all. If that isn't what you want then you don't have to. Just make sure that it is clear that they are not supposed to be balanced to avoid any badly placed expectations. The remaining points all assume that the answer to this question is yes, you do want them to be balanced.

Balance Concepts: So the first step is to make sure the image of the caster and the martial in your head are balanced. If they are not everything else is only a patch on top of a broken core. One refrain I hear a lot is "How can you balance a reality warper or and a guy who swings a stick." The answer is you change one of them. You either scale the caster down or scale the martial up. Or if they scale individually (such as D&D's 20 level range) make sure they have hit the same scaling points. Again this is all conceptual work; if your caster can create pocket dimensions then the martial might have to be able to smash the wall between worlds.



Those are the two biggest steps, and the two that I see just entirely missed, ignored, or even rejected in attempts to fix this issue.

[Ignimortis]

Which means that at some level, you have to acknowledge that casters are going to be handed great power by the nature of the matter. Maybe its X better than martials, maybe its 100 X better, but it is almost always without fail better. Balance derives from imposing limits on that power; even uplifting the martials always leaves them at the earlier "well, he can't FLY - but maybe he can jump really high?" which is still objectively worse than being able to fly for all practical purposes (barring, of course, creating special extraordinary "ha, look if I set the conditions exactly right and the players go exactly according to plan, a martial might have a chance to be equal here" situations).

That limiting isn't "punishing them for daring to play their character", its saying "you were given an objectively better set of tools to use, no, that's not free".

If you're giving someone great mechanical power, trying to limit the use of that power by mostly narrative devices is usually a failure, because not every GM is capable of using those devices to the necessary extent. Shadowrun is a prime example of this - to properly balance mages in Shadowrun in this way, you'd have to put special magehunting teams into the game, and randomly drop surveillance and checks and general mistrust and fear from the populace onto the mage.

It would be far easier to balance mages mechanically, make them less capable of taking augmentations (the current penalties are not harsh enough and need to be substantially higher for Awakened), remove or severely limit cancerous spells such as Mob Mind and Turn to Goo, and make spirit summoning both harder and less rewarding. This way, you're still letting people play a mage, but a mage doesn't break the game mechanically unless they try so hard they probably pass out right after, and doesn't have to invoke as much a counter-response from the setting. Meanwhile, non-mages keep doing their stuff very well, and since the mage cannot overtake them in these endeavors, everyone's happy.

[Willie the Duck]

So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?

[Xervous]

So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?

Somewhat ironic but I remember setting guidelines placed various popular chrome and vatjob parts as being more detectable than a mage who is just existing and quite illegal to boot (or cybergun in the foot if that’s your style). Though in shadowrun if you’re not breaking a few laws something is clearly wrong. Even optimal play of some of the newer editions has you boosting Americars all day.

[Ignimortis]

So it sounds like you could balance mages in a theoretical version of Shadowrun just by making the opportunity cost actually meaningful, do I read you right?

That was my impression of the game bitd (1e or 2e, can't remember) -- sure all those fancy spells sounded fun, but man alive was it fun to go over all the cybernetics and stuff and would you really give up having built in cybereyes and netjacks and subdermal armor for it?

Yes, you probably could. If early SR had mages gamble a lot when using magic, but getting powerful results in return, then modern SR is just "magic is better than non-magic, for everything", and doesn't really incur opportunity costs you can't handle if you know the game. There are some spells that are too good, spirits are outright broken, and, well...

Basically, over time, magic got less and less costly to pick up and use (2e and 5e are incomparable in that regard - the former required priority A and A only, the latter lets you have magic with a C), while cybernetics pretty much stayed the same or got worse - as in, subdermal armor is now +1 dice to soak damage, but still costs 0.5 essence (1/12th of the total), and is absolutely a poor choice now.

Meanwhile, mages can pick up a few choice augments (up to 1 Essence's worth) very easily, by paying a fee of about 45 karma (so maybe 7-8 sessions of play, less if your GM isn't following the dumb suggestions for awards which don't let anyone non-magic progress meaningfully) to not lose any of their magic capabilities.


Somewhat ironic but I remember setting guidelines placed various popular chrome and vatjob parts as being more detectable than a mage who is just existing and quite illegal to boot (or cybergun in the foot if that’s your style). Though in shadowrun if you’re not breaking a few laws something is clearly wrong. Even optimal play of some of the newer editions has you boosting Americars all day.

The introduction of portable cyberware scanners ruined the verisimilitude immensely. Mages can still only be detected by mages (when they're not actively casting), but any rent-a-cop can scan you and go "holy crap" at your military-grade enhancements, then tell you to stop and raise your hands.

[Pex]

Note: This is exactly Why the Caster/Martial Disparity exists.

I'm sure if we did a poll nearly everyone would be just fine with "punishing" a martial character endless every round for even daring to do what they are "supposed" to be doing. And everyone would have the same answer/deference: Martial's Suck!

But even suggest anything ever might happen to the special spellcaster is unthinkable.

This is what needs to be fixed.

This goes for martials too. In 5E, Berzerker Barbarians suffer exhaustion for their rage power. Beastmaster Rangers get a cool pet, but the pet is useless. In Pathfinder, if you take the feat Cleave for an extra attack you suffer a -2 AC. If you Charge in 3E or Pathfinder you suffer -2 AC. I don't want any PC to be worse off for doing what it's supposed to be doing.




A very extreme example would be something like people complaining that the tank is running out of HP after taking hits for the rest of the party. Sure you could define tanks who completely negate attacks, but the classic tank that just takes less damage and can take more isn't being punished for filling that role even if they do need a healer eventually. And I could take a step back and talk about fail-forward systems which I have heard actual complains about but more generally the point is I think costs and risks can be used properly.

That's not punishment. That's the NPC doing something against the PC. The punishment is in regards to the PC using his own class ability, like the aforementioned 5E Berserker Barbarian suffering exhaustion for raging.

[Zarrgon]

Observing these and other martial shortcomings we can declare that certain iconic martials are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game. We can objectively declare that martials suck as presented in the rules. Note that we are still treading wholly upon the RAW of the system and its merits, not an ounce of opinion enters into it yet.


Now note D&D is also full things that certain iconic casters are at a horrible disadvantage for interacting with certain aspects of the game.

And now note my big point: Most people will flat out refuse to even think about using the aspects of the game that disadvantage spellcasters.


This goes for martials too. In 5E, Berzerker Barbarians suffer exhaustion for their rage power. Beastmaster Rangers get a cool pet, but the pet is useless. In Pathfinder, if you take the feat Cleave for an extra attack you suffer a -2 AC. If you Charge in 3E or Pathfinder you suffer -2 AC. I don't want any PC to be worse off for doing what it's supposed to be doing.

I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?

[JNAProductions]

I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?

That's exactly the point. Casters have few to none negatives, while martials have a lot, within the RAW.

[Pex]

I think you missed something? D&D is overloaded with negative things that effect the martial characters and, as you said "punishes them for just doing what the character is made to do."

Ok....so where are the negative caster effects? Does spellcasting ever exhaust any spellcaster? Does any spellcaster have a useless pet? Is there any casting action that gives the caster a -2 to AC?

I'm not arguing the merits of D&D. This thread is game system neutral. My point is it's a bad idea to punish any character, spellcaster or warrior, for doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's since been changed, but I remember playing an edition of Sega Star Wars where you had to lose hit points to use Force powers. Even the DM agreed how dumb it was and gave me max hit points just so I can play a Jedi.

Resource pool management is fine. Limited knowledge of abilities is fine. Prerequisites of knowing abilities to learn more powerful abilities is fine. Bringing a character closer to death is not. Neither is making the game unfun to play because NPCs hate you.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's exactly the point. Casters have few to none negatives, while martials have a lot, within the RAW.

I tried to implement something like caster negatives in a recent game.

I'll try to simplify it so it's a bit more system agnostic, but I effectively added a rule that said that if a full caster (like a Wizard) tried to cast one of their biggest spells, the effect would be delayed until the start of their next turn (when they can then cast another spell). In this system (5e), taking damage while concentrating on a spell could come with a risk of losing the spell.

This opened up opportunities for interruption, created dependency on martial characters for protection, and allowed the spell effects to be telegraphed instead of instantaneous. Since these rules also applied to enemies, it'd spice up my boss fights to have more player options to deal with them.

But it got a lot of backlash. Once of my players refused to play a caster under these rules and instead rolled a martial, several heated discussions continued until we removed it before it ever became relevant (as it didn't impact casters until they had at least two tiers of spells to cast).




Seems even if you wanted to change how casters worked, the players who play those casters would take it as a direct attack, and those that don't wouldn't see it as helping them at all.

[Max_Killjoy]

GURPS or Hero System, for example, use the general method of 'this power costs points to have access to, and expends some kind of endurance score (and having a higher endurance pool also costs points). If you spend the points to get it, you will have less points to spend on other generally desirable qualities like defense, and perhaps you want to take distrusted:wizard as a penalty for bonus points to spend.' It works... about was well as the rest of the system(s)*. If I was required to point to a model where it works best, I think this would be it.
*And let's be clear, for all the good intentions of the point buy model, both have serious issues with balancing characters. They are easy to game and there are always simply-best-build-options, regardless of the constraints your GM puts up.


And as someone who has spent a lot of time working with point-based systems (playing, GMing, analytics), there are times when I read posts about balancing "casters" and "martials" and they come across as saying "dammit I insist that we find a way to balance a 150 point character and a 400 point character". :smallconfused: There's simply no willingness to give on any axis.

As an aside, much of that * problem is, IMO, caused by gamers who don't understand that HERO or GURPS are toolkits requiring further work, not out-of-the-box rulesets in which anything not expressly forbidden is encouraged. They're expecting something that tells them what they can and can't do, not a kit that gives them ways to do things that they have to separately decide if they want characters in this campaign to be able to do.




It is rather specific to the situation where:

some player characters are expected to get magic, while others do not (in games where everyone is a mage, like Invisible Suns, the answer to the question 'but what about non-magic users?' is effectively, 'sucks to be them, but you aren't playing as one.'
there is an expectation of balance (combined with the above one, Ars Magica has you play both wizard and nonwizard characters, and the wizards are going to be more powerful, but it is okay because no one is only playing nonwizards).
wizards actually can do more (lots of Fate or PbtA games are such that 'magic' doesn't actually solve more problems.)



Yeap, the first two are things that can "give" in order to solve the conundrum. The third, depending on the system, can be one where the balance is moved from the purely mechanical impact of the character, to the narrative impact of the character.

If I were turning the setting for something I'm writing ("shadow and soul" as shorthand for the setting) into a game setting and system, I would never try to set the system up to balance the wildly disparate "power" levels, and I would make it utterly clear to the gamers that there's no intent to balance them. You've got the typical power scale with veteran soldiers and swords for hire, itinerate priests and hedge wizards and dabblers, rogues and such, who might have a little utility magic and basic healing and such, and those sorts of characters would be completely ingrained in the everyday life and culture and relationships and power structures of the world. Then there's an entirely different "hidden world" / international subculture of elder masters, mystics, true magi, seekers, avatars, god-touched agents of the temples and churches, Zath troubleshooters and meddlers, etc. Against one of those characters, you'd need a whole team of "normal adventurers" and an airtight plan with multiple contigencies.

[Telok]

Two things I've noticed seem to be missing in here: source fiction emulation and rate of activity vs. effect.

WHFRP, for all the hate it's casting mechanism gets, is fairly faithful the the fiction it tries to emulate. Casting is strong & dangerous, npcs are suspicous and hateful because of the danger it represents. That's how the WH fiction goes and what the system wants to emulate. I don't think you can say its 'bad' unless it fails in that goal. You can certainly dislike it, or argue if it 'balances' with not casting for a particular definition of balance, or people (mis)using the system a particular way. But its not bad unless it failed the design goal of emulating the fiction, as long as emulating the fiction was the goal.

Now D&D dosen't have an original fiction any more, so it should have a working definition of what balance means. I don't think it does but thankfully that's not my problem. These days ShadowRun probably falls into this category too, but I haven't played that since middle-early 3e.

The other thing is rate vs. effect and our assumptions on that. Pex mentioned that casters shouldn't br penalized for doing what they are supposed to do. But I think that there was an implicit assumption that casters should be using magic very often, if not for absolutely everything. If you go with that assumption then you're assuming that casters cast as often as warriors attack and skill monkeys use skills. Which, for what I think of as balance, means that the caster's magic can only be allowed to be as effective as the warrior's attacks and the skill monkey's skills. D&D 4 & 5 do sort of that with basic attacks, the fighter can have three 1d8 bow attacks when the wizard has one 3d8 magic zap. They don't do it with skills though, casting jump doesn't just subtsitute int for str and add proficency. AD&D was different, a first level magic user had a spell. One. But it would nearly always work and you could charm (real charm magic, not some 'it fails to hate you instantly' effect) an ogre for a day or more, or put an entire room into a deep sleep.

Those are vastly different assumptions of how often a caster uses magic and how effective or powerful it should be. Is one better than the other? That's a persinal judgement call made with personal preference bias. Is one more balanced than the other? How are defining balance? Is one easier to balance than the other? That probaby depends on how extreme you go. Go with having everything always at will and you can just make magic the same effects as attacks, skills, etc., but with a different description. That's balanced, right? At the opposite extreme quantify what one other person can do in one encounter and let the caster do one spell that has the same level of effect, and then they can't do anything else. The extremes are relatively easy to balance, I just don't know if anyone wants to play that way.

[Zarrgon]

I'm not arguing the merits of D&D. This thread is game system neutral. My point is it's a bad idea to punish any character, spellcaster or warrior, for doing what it's supposed to be doing.

The issue here is "punish" as I think that is over used as a blanket word to say nothing negative can ever effect casters. Plenty of RPGs have negative magic effects for spellcasters, as the idea goes back to legends and fairy tales worldwide. Spellcasters pay a cost for the power they get. And games that don't have that, for example any D&D starting at 3E have the caster/martial disparity.

Plenty of games don't have caster/martial disparity. A lot do the easy way: magic does very little effects. Some just do the twist of making combat less important. And the ones that are left, do negative magical effects.

[Tanarii]

Yes, you probably could. If early SR had mages gamble a lot when using magic, but getting powerful results in return, then modern SR is just "magic is better than non-magic, for everything", and doesn't really incur opportunity costs you can't handle if you know the game. There are some spells that are too good, spirits are outright broken, and, well...

Basically, over time, magic got less and less costly to pick up and use (2e and 5e are incomparable in that regard - the former required priority A and A only, the latter lets you have magic with a C), while cybernetics pretty much stayed the same or got worse - as in, subdermal armor is now +1 dice to soak damage, but still costs 0.5 essence (1/12th of the total), and is absolutely a poor choice now.
This is what happens when people complain constraints and limitations on magic (which can be quite severe due to its power) are unfun and punishing casters, and they are removed without correspondingly reducing the power of magic.

Although that's somewhat surprising in a sci-fi technological RPG. It's quite easy to have technology outstrip and surpass magic if you want it to.

And I'm sorry to hear modern SR went down the same path as D&D. Hopefully they'll get around to the "rebalancing" process that 4e and 5e D&D went through.

[Cluedrew]

A kind of more-stark model of what D&D used to do (and still partially has) is Symbaroum.
[...]
Overall, I don't want to discount power-for-consequence as a build mechanic, as not even looking at the option walls off a huge amount of design space, yet I don't know of many good implementations,I think the consequences have to be smaller to be more meaningful. Small enough that you can afford to face them during the campaign. If the cost is so high that it effectively kills the character or worse than people will just never risk it or choose that consequence.

Consider the caster exploding in Warhammer, the table-top war game as opposed to the role-playing game. In the war game you just lost a special unit attachment (or solo, I think they can be either), which had a punch of special abilities attached to it and for a single model probably cost you a lot of army points. In the role-playing game you just lost a player character which had personal relations and subplots attached to them and mechanically is the entirety of one player's contribution to the game. These two things are not equivalent.

So I think you need a risk system more like the war game model if you want people to engage with it. And make sure that it can be gamed in a thematically appropriate way because I doubt anyone is ever going to be able to keep it from being gamed at all.


That's not punishment. That's the NPC doing something against the PC. The punishment is in regards to the PC using his own class ability, like the aforementioned 5E Berserker Barbarian suffering exhaustion for raging.I feel I should clarify that it wasn't supposed to be. It was an example of something so far down the punishment-cost axis that although you could theoretically stick either in "The [HERE] for preventing your allies from getting attacked is your character is attacked." I don't think anyone would argue it comes across as a punishment. But then again outside of these sorts of discussions who would phrase it like that?


Two things I've noticed seem to be missing in here: source fiction emulation and rate of activity vs. effect.Man you make me want to go back to my homebrew system with this. I was quite proud of the primary caster archetype in it as it drew from some... different kinds of stories so they had a different focus that meant you could build a viable caster who could cast spells. Quertus would hate it because it wouldn't feel Magical and most people seem to agree with him because that is how most casters seem to be going these days. I'm sure we could dig deep to figure out why, there are probably shallow reasons like not wanting to wait and some deep ones like how Bond's gadgets don't work nearly is well if you don't know what is going to happen.

[Ignimortis]

This is what happens when people complain constraints and limitations on magic (which can be quite severe due to its power) are unfun and punishing casters, and they are removed without correspondingly reducing the power of magic.

Although that's somewhat surprising in a sci-fi technological RPG. It's quite easy to have technology outstrip and surpass magic if you want it to.

And I'm sorry to hear modern SR went down the same path as D&D. Hopefully they'll get around to the "rebalancing" process that 4e and 5e D&D went through.

Precisely. It's the same thing as D&D - you let people use magic easier, but don't make it any weaker. That's bound to cause problems by default.

A rebalance is quite unlikely, as 6e seems to demonstrate. 5e and 6e both went significantly further than the previous edition (so 5e is worse than 4e and 6e is worse than 5e) to buff mages and nerf mundanes who aren't deckers (deckers seem to get a pass, maybe because 4e didn't have them) in various ways, and at this point it's no secret that the line main developer, Jason Hardy, likes magic and dislikes mundanes, especially things that they had an edge in, as in soak tanking.

[Telok]

Consider the caster exploding in Warhammer, the table-top war game as opposed to the role-playing game. In the war game you just lost a special unit attachment (or solo, I think they can be either), which had a punch of special abilities attached to it and for a single model probably cost you a lot of army points. In the role-playing game you just lost a player character which had personal relations and subplots attached to them and mechanically is the entirety of one player's contribution to the game. These two things are not equivalent.

Keep in mind that Warhammer has two things to mitigate this, fate points and 'undercasting'. Fate points are of course a 'survive the foo' currency thay, given the intended lethality of WH, are semi-required to have long term character advancement. The concept of undercasting relies on WH using a skill based magic system. You accept higher chances of not casting, or taking many more rounds to succesfully cast, in exchange for a lower or zero chance of horrible messy death.

Mind, I'm not up on the last couple WHFRP versions and they tweak/change the system pretty much every time but the concepts remain. Plus I know people who are gleefully willing to risk everything for a bigger fireball and D&D wildmages aren't random enough for them.

[Lucas Yew]

Precisely. It's the same thing as D&D - you let people use magic easier, but don't make it any weaker. That's bound to cause problems by default.

A rebalance is quite unlikely, as 6e seems to demonstrate. 5e and 6e both went significantly further than the previous edition (so 5e is worse than 4e and 6e is worse than 5e) to buff mages and nerf mundanes who aren't deckers (deckers seem to get a pass, maybe because 4e didn't have them) in various ways, and at this point it's no secret that the line main developer, Jason Hardy, likes magic and dislikes mundanes, especially things that they had an edge in, as in soak tanking.

Ouch. It really is going the same route as D&D. My suspicion that the vocal minorities with some sort of a grudge filled wish denial fantasy against brawny folk (in contrast to brainy ones they identify with regardless of actual personal intellect), and a chief creator (or more others) who has the exact same ideals complying and turning the tides of game rules development into a twisted form of immoral nerd fantasy, is further augmented...

[Pex]

The issue here is "punish" as I think that is over used as a blanket word to say nothing negative can ever effect casters. Plenty of RPGs have negative magic effects for spellcasters, as the idea goes back to legends and fairy tales worldwide. Spellcasters pay a cost for the power they get. And games that don't have that, for example any D&D starting at 3E have the caster/martial disparity.

Plenty of games don't have caster/martial disparity. A lot do the easy way: magic does very little effects. Some just do the twist of making combat less important. And the ones that are left, do negative magical effects.

What's the degree of negative? You're right, I don't want spellcasters to suffer for casting a spell. I also don't want warriors to suffer for making an attack or using whatever other feature they have. I don't like 5E berserker barbarians suffering exhaustion for using their rage ability. That's why I will never play one. I don't want anyone to suffer for doing whatever it is their character is supposed to do. For any game system that uses that mechanic as a balance feature, I won't like it and won't want to play. If you absolutely hate a PC casting a spell, get rid of the spell. If you hate PCs casting any spells, that's your taste and don't play games where PCs get to cast spells. That doesn't mean the game should get rid of spellcasters or make them suffer for being one.

[Xervous]

Having gotten close enough to SR6e to notice the background count stirring up a storm of toxic spirits the system is on a lesser note biased, but the overall design is just BAD.

Edge becomes an easy come easy go resource generated by the most nonsensical mechanics and is spent in twos and fours to get modest boosts to rolls. As good as my memory is I am still distrusting myself on remembering the basics in spite of the 20 page debates I read over just how asinine the system is. Edge generates off having better equipment in an opposer check. The ganger swings at my milspec concealed body armor and I gain edge. I can then turn around and spend that edge on stealth vs a hobo across the street as I drag the ganger’s corpse into a nearby dumpster.

What kind of chiphead dreams these things up?


Part of the problem with various ways systems can try to limit casters lies in the nature of casting. The more varied, far reaching and versatile effects magic can produce in a system the harder it is to limit if your method is not limiting the aforementioned characteristics. Unfun drawbacks like a 1% chance to TPK every time you cast a spell, or a 50/50 on your head exploding impose no barrier on what magic can do up until the drawback rears up and disrupts play. These sorts of drawbacks just lead to the aforementioned “don’t play mages”. Conditionals often raise the bar for what optimizations of build or tactics are necessary to run away with magic but may not successfully address all problems. Raising the player skill bar to ward off disruptively OP spellslingers has a rainbow of outcomes. The deep end is the former “don’t play mages”, kiddie pool end does nothing. Deeper waters see a filtering effect by which players and builds that make the cut go runaway as they were doing before. And so on for various points along the spectrum.

If it’s a problem for mages to do X in your system don’t let them do X. Granted some cases of “don’t play mages” lend themselves wonderfully to painting the setting, but that’s only saying “don’t play mages because they’re in the GMs toolbox exclusively as plot tools”.

So long as magic users can produce even isolated extremes of performance beyond what non MU can muster you have the potential for discord. How frequently and how high those spikes are become a matter of taste that guide players to different systems or leave them wallowing in their own ineffective misery.

[Democratus]

What I find amusing is how well balanced the magic and martial classes were in the original D&D - and how player demand has moved things further away from that mark with every edition.

[Xervous]

What I find amusing is how well balanced the magic and martial classes were in the original D&D - and how player demand has moved things further away from that mark with every edition.

Could you qualify what was so well balanced about it?

[Democratus]

Could you qualify what was so well balanced about it?

Sure thing.

There were fewer levels in early editions. Some capped at 10 and others at 14 - a function of the structure of dungeons, which typically had up to 10 levels. This meant you were never seeing spells above 5th-6th level.

There were no cantrips. Every spell cast was a used slot. At level 1 a magic-user would have a single spell for the adventuring day. At 3rd level it was a whopping 3 spells. Limited resources was the core of early editions. It's from this era that the Sleep spell got its nasty reputation. If you have one spell...it better count! :smallcool:

The upshot of this was that martial classes shone brightly for the first half of any campaign, while magic classes came into their own in the latter half of the campaign. This was a fun kind of balance. Did you go with a wizard, knowing that you would struggle until level 5 or so? Or did you take a fighting man and lead the charge in the early levels?

Neither type of character was ever totally eclipsed by the other at any point because:
1) Power levels never got so high that it would be a problem
2) Play style encouraged by early D&D was delving, exploring, avoiding unnecessary fights, and stealing treasure - rather than a series of set-piece battles with cash prizes.
3) Challenges focused much more on players, rather than characters. A player of any class could do something clever, without ever invoking combat or magic rules.

[Willie the Duck]

Could you qualify what was so well balanced about it?

Not Democratus, but I can give my take (EDIT: ninja'd, I see). Magic Users and Fighting Men of oD&D fit a definition of balanced in that one could not dominate or make-irrelevant the other. I mean, you could play a party with no Magic Users, but it would be a significantly harder slog. Magic users had a plethora of 'we win' buttons, both in battle and in dungeon delving (Sleep, Charm Person, Knock, Pass-Wall), many of which were more effective than the same spells have become, often simply based on the assumptions of the time (much of the game was spent at low levels, in dungeons, etc.). However, you did not have a huge number of them (the general assumption was that you could not go out and rest for the night mid-dungeon, also that was back when you prepared a specific loadout and might have prepared a Sleep spell only to discover that the dungeon was mostly undead), and you were incredibly vulnerable (you had about 0.6D6 hp per level, likely nothing from Con, and importantly probably had AC 9 your entire career -- no mage armor, no bracers, a lot fewer defensive spells like blink or mirror image). So a Magic User was an incredible asset, but not one that overshadowed everyone else. In battle much of the time they were standing behind the 2+ rows of fighters+henchmen+hirelings, clutching their daggers (no crossbows or cantrips for them, although people quickly figured out that they could throw flasks of oil as well as anyone else), and waiting for the battle to look like a good time to blow their couple of prepared combat spells. Out of combat they also had a few (pre-prepared, so who knows how applicable) spells which might completely wipe away a given challenge, but because of the limited resources they certainly never made anyone else irrelevant.

So, they certainly qualify as a form of balanced. It also certainly fits the 'balance X powerful thing by making it frustrating' definition (although certainly not the height of it for the game. The Greyhawk expansion and then AD&D added things like not knowing every spell and having to find them through adventuring, spell disruption (and 1e's mage-punitive initiative system, if you used it), high power spells causing aging, taking 10 minutes per spell level to prepare spells, magic item creation requiring DM-gated ingredients (and costing a Con point, through Permanency), and the like.

[Xervous]

Forgive me if I am butchering your presentation of the details but this is the impression I am getting.

wizards are one pump wonders but otherwise deadweight until they become powerhouses but that swing of balance doesn’t matter because you don’t use those rules all that often.

Seems to be a preference for a more free form storytelling system no?

[Democratus]

Forgive me if I am butchering your presentation of the details but this is the impression I am getting.

wizards are one pump wonders but otherwise deadweight until they become powerhouses but that swing of balance doesn’t matter because you don’t use those rules all that often.

Seems to be a preference for a more free form storytelling system no?

Not at all. What early editions of D&D had was a more balanced approach to the various pillars of the game (combat, exploration, interaction). It also emphasized resource management to a much greater degree. The fighting man focused extensively on the combat pillar. The rogue on the exploration pillar. The magic user bridged the gap between these two, as well as having tools for the third (interaction).

When a fight actually happens, you will be glad for the fighters no matter what level you are. The were masters of that domain, and had very good saving throws in case of enemy shenanigans.

When needing to sneak around, listen for enemies behind a door, pop a lock, or deal with nasty traps you had a rogue. The rogue was poor in combat, but great in exploration. It also advanced in levels much faster than other characters.

For the "special occasions" you had the magic user. Spells like Continual Light, Wizard lock, Water Breathing, Clairvoyance, Massmorph, Passwall, and others let the party overcome challenges that would otherwise either be impossible or use more resources than they wanted. If you were so inclined you could also affect the interaction pillar with Charm Person/Monster, spells with a duration in days rather than minutes. In combat there were the obvious spells that have generally survived into current editions.

However, the magic user couldn't be ready for all of these all the time. Spell slots meant that you needed to pick and chose what kind of wizard you would be for the day. Scouting and research were common activities before heading out to an adventure in order to insure better selection of spells.

For the most part, no class would dominate the entire game. And no class had a lock on "power" due to the varied specialties and limitations of each.

[BlacKnight]

What's the degree of negative? You're right, I don't want spellcasters to suffer for casting a spell. I also don't want warriors to suffer for making an attack or using whatever other feature they have. I don't like 5E berserker barbarians suffering exhaustion for using their rage ability. That's why I will never play one. I don't want anyone to suffer for doing whatever it is their character is supposed to do. For any game system that uses that mechanic as a balance feature, I won't like it and won't want to play. If you absolutely hate a PC casting a spell, get rid of the spell. If you hate PCs casting any spells, that's your taste and don't play games where PCs get to cast spells. That doesn't mean the game should get rid of spellcasters or make them suffer for being one.

To be fair any character gets punished when they fail.
If the fighter misses the enemy will have another chance to strike back.
If the rogue fails the Stealth check consequences can be catastrophic.
So where's the difference with the wizard failing to summon a demon and suffering from it?

Or maybe you are against having to pay a price in advance, whatever the outcome of the action is?
But why the Berserker getting exhaustion is bad, but the wizard expending spell slots is not?

[prabe]

To be fair any character gets punished when they fail.
If the fighter misses the enemy will have another chance to strike back.
If the rogue fails the Stealth check consequences can be catastrophic.
So where's the difference with the wizard failing to summon a demon and suffering from it?

Or maybe you are against having to pay a price in advance, whatever the outcome of the action is?
But why the Berserker getting exhaustion is bad, but the wizard expending spell slots is not?

The issue with this analogy is that people are talking about consequences for succeeding. If the Fighter succeeds with their attack/s, he may still not kill the opponent, which will then have an opportunity to attack, and might be more likely to attack the Fighter, so the Fighter seems to be facing a consequence for success. Now, the Wizard summoning a demon might face consequences for doing so, but those consequences likely to be quite different form those the Fighter faces, and there aren't likely to be consequences for successfully casting, say, teleport.

[Jay R]

One of the major balancing factors was that, while wizards had the most powers, they also had the most weaknesses. But a lot of those weaknesses have been removed or nerfed or solutions provided.

Fewer hit points are a major balancing factor — but only if PCs sometimes die. Area effect damage kills the wizards first.

The ability of players to come up with clever solutions is a balancing factor — until you replace that with an INT check.

The limited number of spells is a balancing factor — until you can buy the exact wand you want to have.

The inability to buy armor is a balancing factor — until you can buy bracers of defense.

The requirement that all casters must choose spells in advance is a balancing factor— until you introduce spontaneous casters.

And the fact that wizards start off very weak is a balancing factor — if you start at first level.

I have played off and on since 1975. And it has seemed to me that the game was moderately (not perfectly) balanced by the various weaknesses of the wizards.

But those weaknesses have been slowly erased or minimized over the course of several decades.

[Pex]

To be fair any character gets punished when they fail.
If the fighter misses the enemy will have another chance to strike back.
If the rogue fails the Stealth check consequences can be catastrophic.
So where's the difference with the wizard failing to summon a demon and suffering from it?

Or maybe you are against having to pay a price in advance, whatever the outcome of the action is?
But why the Berserker getting exhaustion is bad, but the wizard expending spell slots is not?

A wizard can fail by missing with his attack roll or the monster makes his saving throw. Failing at something is not punishment. Punishment is your character is worse off doing something than if he hadn't done it. Resource management is a tool. A wizard is not closer to death or vulnerable to something or worse at doing things after casting a 2nd level spell. A berserker barbarian suffers exhaustion for using his rage power - disadvantage on all skill checks and needs to long rest to get rid of it. If he rage powers again his exhaustion becomes worse. He's suffering a penalty for doing what he's supposed to be doing. That's punishment.

[KaussH]

One of the major balancing factors was that, while wizards had the most powers, they also had the most weaknesses. But a lot of those weaknesses have been removed or nerfed or solutions provided.

Fewer hit points are a major balancing factor — but only if PCs sometimes die. Area effect damage kills the wizards first.

The ability of players to come up with clever solutions is a balancing factor — until you replace that with an INT check.

The limited number of spells is a balancing factor — until you can buy the exact wand you want to have.

The inability to buy armor is a balancing factor — until you can buy bracers of defense.

The requirement that all casters must choose spells in advance is a balancing factor— until you introduce spontaneous casters.

And the fact that wizards start off very weak is a balancing factor — if you start at first level.

I have played off and on since 1975. And it has seemed to me that the game was moderately (not perfectly) balanced by the various weaknesses of the wizards.

But those weaknesses have been slowly erased or minimized over the course of several decades.

Exactly this. Over time martal weaknesses have stayed the same or gotten worse (loosing weapons, needing weapons/armor, and their saves have tanked. High level fighters used to have fantastic saves.) But over time almost every single caster issue has been hand waved away. Not keeping track of components, limited spells, limited spell choices, ect.
Honestly if I dont want to play a class with limitations (old paladins, Cavaliers, casters, ect) then I wouldn't play that class. But over time the feeling seems to be that all classes should have as few built in disadvantages as possible and if someone really doesn't like a "requirement " it is fluff and should be reskined.

Now that all said, neither edition is "wrong" it's all swords and sorcery, high and low magic and all game types can be handled with a little gm control.

But the games are front loaded for the fantastic casters to be more awsome then the normal fighters.

As for balance, back in the day we used to say this (1st/2nd ed) a high level wizard can kill an army, a high level fighter can kill that wizard.

[InvisibleBison]

Not at all. What early editions of D&D had was a more balanced approach to the various pillars of the game (combat, exploration, interaction). It also emphasized resource management to a much greater degree. The fighting man focused extensively on the combat pillar. The rogue on the exploration pillar. The magic user bridged the gap between these two, as well as having tools for the third (interaction).

When a fight actually happens, you will be glad for the fighters no matter what level you are. The were masters of that domain, and had very good saving throws in case of enemy shenanigans.

When needing to sneak around, listen for enemies behind a door, pop a lock, or deal with nasty traps you had a rogue. The rogue was poor in combat, but great in exploration. It also advanced in levels much faster than other characters.

For the "special occasions" you had the magic user. Spells like Continual Light, Wizard lock, Water Breathing, Clairvoyance, Massmorph, Passwall, and others let the party overcome challenges that would otherwise either be impossible or use more resources than they wanted. If you were so inclined you could also affect the interaction pillar with Charm Person/Monster, spells with a duration in days rather than minutes. In combat there were the obvious spells that have generally survived into current editions.

However, the magic user couldn't be ready for all of these all the time. Spell slots meant that you needed to pick and chose what kind of wizard you would be for the day. Scouting and research were common activities before heading out to an adventure in order to insure better selection of spells.

For the most part, no class would dominate the entire game. And no class had a lock on "power" due to the varied specialties and limitations of each.

It sounds to me like you're saying that most of the time most players weren't participating, which doesn't sound all that fun.

[NigelWalmsley]

Not at all. What early editions of D&D had was a more balanced approach to the various pillars of the game (combat, exploration, interaction).

The approach you are describing is less balanced, not more. Having each player have a minigame they are good in and they suck the rest of the time is garbage design. The reason the Fighter is bad is that he doesn't have anything to do when there are challenges where "fight" is not an appropriate solution. Making every class like that would make the game worse, not better.


Fewer hit points are a major balancing factor — but only if PCs sometimes die. Area effect damage kills the wizards first.

The Wizard still has less HP. Also, while older versions of D&D were higher lethality, the expectation was in large part that you would churn through Fighting Men and get Magic Users because they were more powerful later on.


The ability of players to come up with clever solutions is a balancing factor — until you replace that with an INT check.

That's not a balancing factor. It's just as possible that the Wizard's player will be creative as the Fighters (in fact, my experience is that people who are good at coming up with clever solutions typically gravitate towards the class with a variety of options). Also, allowing people to solve puzzles by making intelligence checks is good. How else are you supposed to fulfill the fantasy of playing a character who is smarter than you?


The limited number of spells is a balancing factor — until you can buy the exact wand you want to have.

Then why is the Sorcerer still way better than the Fighter? The fact that the Wizard can have exactly the spell he wants is a much-hyped thing, but mostly just having spells that are good is entirely sufficient. And if your solution to imbalance is "stop the Wizard from having abilities that are good", I am prepared to state that it is a categorically bad solution.


The inability to buy armor is a balancing factor — until you can buy bracers of defense.

Again, Wizards are still super squishy in melee. The fact that your AC can now be five better does not give you meaningful ground when monsters are swinging at +25 by 12th level.


The requirement that all casters must choose spells in advance is a balancing factor— until you introduce spontaneous casters.

And yet spontaneous casters are almost universally worse than prepared casters. It seems to me that if you have Wizards > Sorcerers > Fighters, it is somewhat unlikely that the Sorcerers are the ones causing problems for the Fighters.


And the fact that wizards start off very weak is a balancing factor — if you start at first level.

Power now for power later is a garbage design paradigm. If smoothing the power curve, or starting at a level other than 1st causes problems with your balance paradigm, it is a bad balance paradigm.


I have played off and on since 1975. And it has seemed to me that the game was moderately (not perfectly) balanced by the various weaknesses of the wizards.

The perception of game balance in AD&D mostly comes down to lack of knowledge. The vast majority of gaming groups will experience a roughly equivalent level of balance regardless of what edition they play. If you had the same number of people hammering on AD&D as were hammering on 3e, you would have the same level of perceived imbalance. Well, there'd probably also be a lot of "the rules are incomplete, contradictory, or nonsensical".

[Telok]

The approach you are describing is less balanced, not more. Having each player have a minigame they are good in and they suck the rest of the time is garbage design. The reason the Fighter is bad is that he doesn't have anything to do when there are challenges where "fight" is not an appropriate solution. Making every class like that would make the game worse, not better.

See, that's not representative of OD&D/AD&D 1e at all. Well, at least not where I was playing. Your descriptions sound more like my experiences with 3e and 4e.

There weren't really separate minigames and no class was innately incompetent outside their area of expertise (unless you count having the ability to cast spells as one of those areas). Traps were mainly description based, social bits were mainly role play, environment.exploration was mostly resouces and planning, everyone had a chance to sneak up on enemies, etc., etc. They didn't make fighters incapable of anything by dint of being fighters. If you weren't using the optional proficiencies then any "skill" roll was 1d20 or 3d6 or something under a relevant stat, or maybe a save. Even with the proficiencies you were still rolling 1d20 under a stat. Now the thief skills were definitely badly explained and widely misapplied, but they weren't the only ways to climb, sneak, deal with traps, or open doors.

It wasn't 3e+ where you had to have a special class-limited skill or proficiency to find a trap or open a lock, and you didn't have to a an 18+ dex trained skill monkey to have any chance at all to sneak up on someone. There wasn't a "roll to find and disarm traps" minigame, talking to npcs wasn't a "charisma caster rolls social skills" minigame. Was a thief better at climbing than a fighter? Yes, they could scale sheer walls without equipment. That doesn't mean the rest of the party couldn't climb stuff. Was a ranger batter at exploring the wilderness than a magic user? Yes, because they had class features geared towards that. It didn't make mages incompetent at it. The reaction roll tables meant that you just wanted someone with an above average charisma doing the talking at first, not that you needed a 16+ charisma and proficiency in diplomacy to avoid sticking your foot in your mouth every third time you spoke.

[Satinavian]

See, that's not representative of OD&D/AD&D 1e at all. Well, at least not where I was playing. Your descriptions sound more like my experiences with 3e and 4e.

There weren't really separate minigames and no class was innately incompetent outside their area of expertise (unless you count having the ability to cast spells as one of those areas). Traps were mainly description based, social bits were mainly role play, environment.exploration was mostly resouces and planning, everyone had a chance to sneak up on enemies, etc., etc. They didn't make fighters incapable of anything by dint of being fighters. If you weren't using the optional proficiencies then any "skill" roll was 1d20 or 3d6 or something under a relevant stat, or maybe a save. Even with the proficiencies you were still rolling 1d20 under a stat. Now the thief skills were definitely badly explained and widely misapplied, but they weren't the only ways to climb, sneak, deal with traps, or open doors.

It wasn't 3e+ where you had to have a special class-limited skill or proficiency to find a trap or open a lock, and you didn't have to a an 18+ dex trained skill monkey to have any chance at all to sneak up on someone. There wasn't a "roll to find and disarm traps" minigame, talking to npcs wasn't a "charisma caster rolls social skills" minigame. Was a thief better at climbing than a fighter? Yes, they could scale sheer walls without equipment. That doesn't mean the rest of the party couldn't climb stuff. Was a ranger batter at exploring the wilderness than a magic user? Yes, because they had class features geared towards that. It didn't make mages incompetent at it. The reaction roll tables meant that you just wanted someone with an above average charisma doing the talking at first, not that you needed a 16+ charisma and proficiency in diplomacy to avoid sticking your foot in your mouth every third time you spoke.

So the famous "balancing" of early D&D was basically nearly everything you actually did in game being decided by random rolls agains (also random) attributes and DM arbitration. And classes being balanced because class features were mostly secondarry anyway.

While i understand the appeal and many modern rules-light systems do similar, i am not really a fan.

[BlacKnight]

A wizard can fail by missing with his attack roll or the monster makes his saving throw. Failing at something is not punishment. Punishment is your character is worse off doing something than if he hadn't done it. Resource management is a tool. A wizard is not closer to death or vulnerable to something or worse at doing things after casting a 2nd level spell. A berserker barbarian suffers exhaustion for using his rage power - disadvantage on all skill checks and needs to long rest to get rid of it. If he rage powers again his exhaustion becomes worse. He's suffering a penalty for doing what he's supposed to be doing. That's punishment.

Everything is just a matter of probability.
The exhausted barbarian can do the same things that he could do before, he's just more likely to fail.
Similarly a wizard short on spell slots is not restricted from solving a problem (like beating a monster) but he's more likely to not have the right spell and thus failing.
A character low on HP is more likely to die in combat.

But that's just part of the game. Characters use their resources and become weaker.

[Ignimortis]

Everything is just a matter of probability.
The exhausted barbarian can do the same things that he could do before, he's just more likely to fail.
Similarly a wizard short on spell slots is not restricted from solving a problem (like beating a monster) but he's more likely to not have the right spell and thus failing.
A character low on HP is more likely to die in combat.

But that's just part of the game. Characters use their resources and become weaker.

I don't see it that way. Using spell slots doesn't make you worse than you would be without using a spell slot - it's an exchange of a resource for an effect, which leaves no lasting consequence other than you don't have that resource anymore. Berserker's rage, however, does - not only you spend a bonus action to make that extra attack, but you also suffer a negative effect that lasts far longer than the benefit did, and impacts not only your future attempts at doing that same thing, but other things as well.

I can understand where you're coming from, but it just doesn't work out that way. Imagine if spellcasters gained a level of exhaustion per spellcast, but still needed to spend spell slots to actually do that? That's how that works for Berserkers.

[Democratus]

It sounds to me like you're saying that most of the time most players weren't participating, which doesn't sound all that fun.

Not sure where you're getting that from. By that logic you could say that most players in a modern game aren't "participating most of the time" because combat is turn-based and it isn't their turn the entire span of a fight.

RPGs are collaborative. The level of participation for each person at the table is up to the individual sitting in each chair. If 'the spotlight' is on one player for a given moment, rather than feeling cheated by not being the center of things, one can instead support and enjoy another player's moment to shine. This is also participating. It has the additional benefit of being a good sport and a good friend.

[Cluedrew]

On Balance & Fun: Games not being balanced can detract from a game being fun. But balance is not enough to make a game fun. For instance getting rid of classes and a lot of the mechanical variation within the remaining template makes balancing characters much easier. But that strikes me as boring (depending on exactly how much mechanical variation we are talking about) because I really enjoy diversity.

So if the player skill focus of early D&D or heavy niche protection isn't how you want to balance your game that's fine. Some might not like playing blood mage whose last dich option is to pay blood and cast one last ultra spell before passing out, but I could see haven't a lot of fun with that character. (Assuming it is all implemented well.)

[Tanarii]

As far as "head explodes" magic systems, those are meant to be grimdark settings where magicis more typically a thing of NPCs, usually corrupt and evil ones, but given the tone of the setting of course players can choose to play one. Certainly that's the case in Warhammer FRP. Warhammer 40k psykers are a weird one, because they feel like a setting thing that started off as "screwed up empire bases itself on unstable headsploding power because it must" and then players immediately said "yes please can I play one?"

Calling D&D casters rules unfun is by comparison ridiculous. Getting hit shuts down the spell, long memorization times, and limited resources were balancing factors for ridiculous levels of power. It meant the party needed fighters and clerics and weren't a one man show. Even at high levels you were a glass cannon.

Then groups ignored the limitations as unfun, and complained magic users were broken. Then came the edition that removed the limitations as unfun, and people complained wizards were broken. Even now, as unlimited cantrips and no-OA/interruption casting is a thing, it causes some lingering problems.

Something similar happened with ranged weapon attackers and light weapon attackers btw. Their limitations were removed on firing into melee being random as unfun, provoking OAs were unfun, not being able to make melee attacks was unfun so now we have finesse, AC is set so it's almost as good to be lightly armored with Dex because otherwise it's unfun. Oh hey look, Dex is king!

When the "it's unfun" people complain about balance, my response is: What did you expect to happen?



I can understand where you're coming from, but it just doesn't work out that way. Imagine if spellcasters gained a level of exhaustion per spellcast, but still needed to spend spell slots to actually do that? That's how that works for Berserkers.
It'd be fine if the benefit was commensurate with the penalty. So call it if they gained exhaustion for casting a 6th level slot.

[Max_Killjoy]

While the thread didn't appear to be D&D specific, it seems headed that way as usual around here.

One of the things that makes this issue stand out in D&D is that not only does balance need to be done across several classes, it has to be done for every level, and along a steep power gradient that takes the game from "heroes of the everyman" to "might as well be demigods".

[BlacKnight]

I don't see it that way. Using spell slots doesn't make you worse than you would be without using a spell slot - it's an exchange of a resource for an effect, which leaves no lasting consequence other than you don't have that resource anymore. Berserker's rage, however, does - not only you spend a bonus action to make that extra attack, but you also suffer a negative effect that lasts far longer than the benefit did, and impacts not only your future attempts at doing that same thing, but other things as well.

I can understand where you're coming from, but it just doesn't work out that way. Imagine if spellcasters gained a level of exhaustion per spellcast, but still needed to spend spell slots to actually do that? That's how that works for Berserkers.

Of course casting spells make you worse. A wizard with few spells is less powerful than a wizard with more spells.
It seems to me that the problem isn't that, but it's simply that the Berserker rage costs too much for what it offers. But that's just a problem with the specific feature.

Regarding wizards getting exhaustion from casting spells: in Ars Magica it works like that. In older D&D editions certain spells have even worse prices, like aging you.
But wizards are still kings in those games, because the spells are just that good.
It's a matter of appropriate prices (and risks) for appropriate rewards.

[Pex]

Everything is just a matter of probability.
The exhausted barbarian can do the same things that he could do before, he's just more likely to fail.
Similarly a wizard short on spell slots is not restricted from solving a problem (like beating a monster) but he's more likely to not have the right spell and thus failing.
A character low on HP is more likely to die in combat.

But that's just part of the game. Characters use their resources and become weaker.

Again, not the same thing at all. Failing at a task is not punishment. Being attacked by the enemy is not punishment. Unfortunate things happening to a character is not punishment. Spending a resource pool to activate abilities is not punishment. A resource pool is a limitation, and a limitation is fine as a means of balance. Punishment is a type of limitation I don't approve of.

Punishment is your character suffers a penalty as a cost to do its thing. Loss of hit points to activate the ability so you're closer to death. A minus number to something that makes you more vulnerable to attacks than you were. A minus number to dice rolls to do other things or being unable to do other things at all such as losing turns of play. I don't care if it's a warrior or spellcaster. I don't like punishments as a means of balance.

[HouseRules]

Again, not the same thing at all. Failing at a task is not punishment. Being attacked by the enemy is not punishment. Unfortunate things happening to a character is not punishment. Spending a resource pool to activate abilities is not punishment. A resource pool is a limitation, and a limitation is fine as a means of balance. Punishment is a type of limitation I don't approve of.

Punishment is your character suffers a penalty as a cost to do its thing. Loss of hit points to activate the ability so you're closer to death. A minus number to something that makes you more vulnerable to attacks than you were. A minus number to dice rolls to do other things or being unable to do other things at all such as losing turns of play. I don't care if it's a warrior or spellcaster. I don't like punishments as a means of balance.

Lose Hit Points in order to tank?

[Zarrgon]

What I find amusing is how well balanced the magic and martial classes were in the original D&D - and how player demand has moved things further away from that mark with every edition.

Things were just fine and balanced in 2E too. The problems start with 3E.


Could you qualify what was so well balanced about it?

1.No skill system or maybe a lite vague skill system if you felt like using it.

2.Few mechanical utility spells, and no skill based spells(as there is no skill system).

3.DM control: the DM says your blue is gray, it's final, the game rolls on.

4.Lots more weird, strange reality and magic that is completely non rules mechanical.

5.Lots of negative effects game wide, plus a ton of specific magical ones.

6.No super easy access to creating magic items at will and a great many such items being very broken like scrolls and wands.


Now, the Wizard summoning a demon might face consequences for doing so, but those consequences likely to be quite different form those the Fighter faces, and there aren't likely to be consequences for successfully casting, say, teleport.

Unfortunately after 3E the gaming culture is focused on only the game rules and nothing else matters. A lot of things do, in fact, have negative effects even more so for magic. But only in the fluff text. And the rules only culture ignores fluff text.

In the Old School Culture even summoning one demon or casting one teleport can be dangerous and have negative effects: using either several times and things will get bad for a character fast.

In the Rule are the Game Culture they can summon 1,000's of demons and cast 1,000's of teleports, and it's all safe and has no negative effects.


One of the things that makes this issue stand out in D&D is that not only does balance need to be done across several classes, it has to be done for every level, and along a steep power gradient that takes the game from "heroes of the everyman" to "might as well be demigods".

The big problem with D&D has always been the upward power curve. The game rules mention it all the time, but only in a vague way...and just about never has any mechanical rules other then the vague "monsters get harder...sort of".

As the characters go up in levels, so does...or should...the game. Unfortunately many game cultures choose not to play the game with the upward power curve. And such a curve is a huge balance to the game. A skilled character can unlock any lock, but the wizard can't knock open a door if the game has no doors.



Punishment is your character suffers a penalty as a cost to do its thing. Loss of hit points to activate the ability so you're closer to death. A minus number to something that makes you more vulnerable to attacks than you were. A minus number to dice rolls to do other things or being unable to do other things at all such as losing turns of play. I don't care if it's a warrior or spellcaster. I don't like punishments as a means of balance.

Are you fine with things as long as people don't say they are "for balance"?

Just compare the two cultures: You'd say the way to do it is to say a character can use the ability X number of times a day. The other way is a character can use the ability at will, but takes damage: so this player can 'take a chance' and 'push' as they will at a cost...or not.

I think that giving the player the choice: you can do this sure, but you will get a negative effect is the right game culture. If a player wants to be safe, they can simply choose not to do it...or even maybe find a away around it.

[BlacKnight]

Again, not the same thing at all. Failing at a task is not punishment. Being attacked by the enemy is not punishment. Unfortunate things happening to a character is not punishment. Spending a resource pool to activate abilities is not punishment. A resource pool is a limitation, and a limitation is fine as a means of balance. Punishment is a type of limitation I don't approve of.

Punishment is your character suffers a penalty as a cost to do its thing. Loss of hit points to activate the ability so you're closer to death. A minus number to something that makes you more vulnerable to attacks than you were. A minus number to dice rolls to do other things or being unable to do other things at all such as losing turns of play. I don't care if it's a warrior or spellcaster. I don't like punishments as a means of balance.

Your distinction between limitations and punishments is completely arbitrary and doesn't really make sense.
Consider this: losing HP (in D&D I presume) doesn't give you a penalty to any roll. So why do you list it as a punishment?
Yes, a character with fewer HP is more likely to die. But the same is true for a wizard with fewer spell slots.

[Ignimortis]

Of course casting spells make you worse. A wizard with few spells is less powerful than a wizard with more spells.
It seems to me that the problem isn't that, but it's simply that the Berserker rage costs too much for what it offers. But that's just a problem with the specific feature.

Regarding wizards getting exhaustion from casting spells: in Ars Magica it works like that. In older D&D editions certain spells have even worse prices, like aging you.
But wizards are still kings in those games, because the spells are just that good.
It's a matter of appropriate prices (and risks) for appropriate rewards.

In part, yes, that's the question about the price being too steep for the effect provided. But the wizard with less spells is worse at only one thing - spellcasting. All of his other capabilities are untouched. The berserker who just used his rage is worse at things that are not necessarily related to combat.


Your distinction between limitations and punishments is completely arbitrary and doesn't really make sense.
Consider this: losing HP (in D&D I presume) doesn't give you a penalty to any roll. So why do you list it as a punishment?
Yes, a character with fewer HP is more likely to die. But the same is true for a wizard with fewer spell slots.

Because HP in general isn't bound to any resource-expenditure mechanics, and is a resource that you don't choose to use - you just get hit or not. Therefore, any mechanic that makes you spend HP to achieve an effect, introduces an active way to spend a resource that wasn't designed to be spent actively, and is in fact more paramount to your survival than any other resource.

[Pex]

Lose Hit Points in order to tank?

It's not about what the bad guys do to you. It's only about what ever it is your character does, your actions, your abilities, your powers. A bad guy hits you, and you take 1d8 + 3 damage. That's not punishment. You activate an ability to do a Cool Thing, but you lose 1d8 + 3 hit points for doing it. That's punishment.





Are you fine with things as long as people don't say they are "for balance"?

Just compare the two cultures: You'd say the way to do it is to say a character can use the ability X number of times a day. The other way is a character can use the ability at will, but takes damage: so this player can 'take a chance' and 'push' as they will at a cost...or not.

I think that giving the player the choice: you can do this sure, but you will get a negative effect is the right game culture. If a player wants to be safe, they can simply choose not to do it...or even maybe find a away around it.

It doesn't matter if they say balance or not. All abilities are optional. A berserker barbarian doesn't have to use his rage power, but if he doesn't use it because he doesn't want exhaustion then he essentially doesn't have the ability at all and it's a waste of space. That's the punishment. Hurt yourself or don't do anything is not a good choice. If a spellcasting rule was cast a spell but lose hit points every time you do so (i.e. that old Sega Star Wars game), if I never cast a spell because I don't want to lose hit points then why am I playing a spellcaster (why bother playing a Jedi if I don't use the Force because I'll kill my own character)? Use my abilities and die or don't use my abilities. That's not really a choice.


Your distinction between limitations and punishments is completely arbitrary and doesn't really make sense.
Consider this: losing HP (in D&D I presume) doesn't give you a penalty to any roll. So why do you list it as a punishment?
Yes, a character with fewer HP is more likely to die. But the same is true for a wizard with fewer spell slots.

The distinction is quite clear. Hurting yourself to use an ability is punishment. Losing hit points hurts you because you're closer to death. A bad guy hitting you is just the bad guy hitting you. Losing hit points to use an ability is hitting yourself. A resource pool - spell slots, mana, X uses per day is just a limitation. I don't object to all or having limitations. I only object to limitations that hurts yourself for doing it. It has no bearing whatsoever on what any opponent does for his action for anything and everything. The opponent is irrelevant. It is only about whatever it is your own character does. If you're killing yourself or making yourself vulnerable or making yourself not be able to do anything else to do whatever ability you're supposed to be doing, that's the punishment.

[Zarrgon]

It doesn't matter if they say balance or not. All abilities are optional. A berserker barbarian doesn't have to use his rage power, but if he doesn't use it because he doesn't want exhaustion then he essentially doesn't have the ability at all and it's a waste of space. That's the punishment. Hurt yourself or don't do anything is not a good choice. If a spellcasting rule was cast a spell but lose hit points every time you do so (i.e. that old Sega Star Wars game), if I never cast a spell because I don't want to lose hit points then why am I playing a spellcaster (why bother playing a Jedi if I don't use the Force because I'll kill my own character)? Use my abilities and die or don't use my abilities. That's not really a choice.

It's two very different gaming cultures.

If your character does not all the time, at least when you want them too, use the ability that you feel is the only and defining characteristic about the character then your unhappy and don't feel your playing the character. This is very much the 4E D&D mindset and the classic complaint that if a wizard is not casting a spell they are not a wizard.

The other gaming culture is much more open and counts anything the character does as playing the character just fine. Does my wizard throw daggers at the goblins: fine with me. I'm still playing the game and having fun (and I'm not in any way playing the numbers game where I'm going to complain that thrown daggers do less damage then (some of) my spells.)


And the big, big, big difference between the two cultures above is the burn out and the 15 minute day. In just a couple encounters, your Ability Use Culture character will burn out and run out of abilities when they use them in every encounter. And this leads directly to the 15 minute day as player complain that they "must" play the game only at full power always. On the other hand the It's All Fine Culture knows they have to save their abilities for big "important" events and fights. They are not tossing a fireball at the first giant rat they see during the day.

And just look at how much that creates the Caster/Martial Disparity.

[NigelWalmsley]

Not sure where you're getting that from. By that logic you could say that most players in a modern game aren't "participating most of the time" because combat is turn-based and it isn't their turn the entire span of a fight.

There's a pretty obvious difference between "people declare actions in sequence" and "most characters don't have abilities that are relevant to most encounters". People like to be able to do things and take character actions. There's a reason "hanging out with a group of people who are playing D&D" is less popular than "playing D&D". Actively participating is part of the experience.


Warhammer 40k psykers are a weird one, because they feel like a setting thing that started off as "screwed up empire bases itself on unstable headsploding power because it must" and then players immediately said "yes please can I play one?"

Nothing in Warhammer makes any sense at all because it's a satire written by people who've stopped realizing it was a satire. It's like if someone made a new edition of Paranoia that was totally straight "high tech secret agents" game, but kept all the tropes and setting material from the previous games.


Calling D&D casters rules unfun is by comparison ridiculous.

No it isn't. The fact that there are games where casting is more punishing than D&D doesn't mean D&D casting isn't too punishing.


Then groups ignored the limitations as unfun, and complained magic users were broken. Then came the edition that removed the limitations as unfun, and people complained wizards were broken.

The limitations on casters in AD&D are mostly some combination of still present, not meaningful, or bad design. Fighters were still bad before 3e, the game was just played in a way that did not reward having useful abilities as much, and was not subject to the same scrutiny as 3e was. The biggest balance issues aren't even anything that happened to casters directly, but changes to monster HP and magic items.


When the "it's unfun" people complain about balance, my response is: What did you expect to happen?

I expected the designers to design a game that was both balanced and fun. Is this supposed to be some kind of hard problem? Because there are plenty of games out there that are balanced but still fun.


Things were just fine and balanced in 2E too. The problems start with 3E.

No, they don't. The overwhelming majority of problems people have with 3e casters were present in 2e. Casters were always better than Fighters at high levels. People have nostalgia for AD&D, but almost all the changes made in the transition were good.


3.DM control: the DM says your blue is gray, it's final, the game rolls on.

The great virtue of a cooperative storytelling game: giving one participant unassailable veto authority, and relying on them to patch mechanical problems. Truly, moving away from that was a great tragedy.


In the Rule are the Game Culture they can summon 1,000's of demons and cast 1,000's of teleports, and it's all safe and has no negative effects.

Yes, actions have predictable consequences and players can make informed decisions. This is an objectively good thing. The idea that Teleport should sometimes kill you because you pissed off your DM is inexcusable, and if you were relying on that for game balance, you deserve an imbalanced game.


I think that giving the player the choice: you can do this sure, but you will get a negative effect is the right game culture. If a player wants to be safe, they can simply choose not to do it...or even maybe find a away around it.

How could they possibly "find a way around it" when "it" is something that doesn't exist until the DM decides it does? If you want the players to figure out clever solutions to problems, what you are asking for is to have problems be defined in mechanical terms.

[Tanarii]

I expected the designers to design a game that was both balanced and fun. Is this supposed to be some kind of hard problem? Because there are plenty of games out there that are balanced but still fun.I recommend you check out D&D 4e or 13th Age then.

[Cluedrew]

To Pex: What about an ability that gets weaker every time you use it? If you use the ability while its fresh it has power 4, use it again and it has power 3 and so on. There is probably something that refreshes or regenerates the power and it doesn't effect anything else the character does. What are your thoughts on that?

[Zarrgon]

No, they don't. The overwhelming majority of problems people have with 3e casters were present in 2e. Casters were always better than Fighters at high levels. People have nostalgia for AD&D, but almost all the changes made in the transition were good.

Well, except 2E did not have any problems. After all 2E had the magic fix: the DM could do anything. If you were a player you might not like it, but it was the way of things.

Not sure why you think 2E spellcasters were "better" then fighters.



The great virtue of a cooperative storytelling game: giving one participant unassailable veto authority, and relying on them to patch mechanical problems. Truly, moving away from that was a great tragedy.

And it was great when 5E moved back to that almost 100%.



Yes, actions have predictable consequences and players can make informed decisions. This is an objectively good thing. The idea that Teleport should sometimes kill you because you pissed off your DM is inexcusable, and if you were relying on that for game balance, you deserve an imbalanced game.

The problem here is your only looking at this as the DM vs the Players, and that is one of the worst ways to play the game.

The problem is, that starting in 3E actions do not have predictable consequences: almost all the rules for consequences were removed and left only fluff that most DMs ignored. Up until 3.5E the spell Teleport says in the description: areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible. But that is it, and a great many DMs just read that as fluff and ignore it.



How could they possibly "find a way around it" when "it" is something that doesn't exist until the DM decides it does? If you want the players to figure out clever solutions to problems, what you are asking for is to have problems be defined in mechanical terms.

I'm not sure what you mean here...nothing in the game "exists" until the DM decides it does. And in no way must every problem have a boring and dull mechanical solution. To run the game of having the characters encounter problem type A, that they must use solution type A to overcome is not a way of great game play.

[Pex]

To Pex: What about an ability that gets weaker every time you use it? If you use the ability while its fresh it has power 4, use it again and it has power 3 and so on. There is probably something that refreshes or regenerates the power and it doesn't effect anything else the character does. What are your thoughts on that?

That's a resource pool mechanic, and you aren't hurt by it. It's limiting the ability itself, not making the character suffer for using it. It's not a punishment. It reminds me of the Psionic Die in a recent Unearthed Arcana. I know some people didn't like it. I was ok with it. It's possible for me not to like a limitation mechanic without the limitation being a punishment. It becomes a matter of personal taste. Well, so too is the concept of punishment I guess, but I'll vigorously argue against a punishment limitation and merely agree to disagree if it's just a mechanic I don't like.

[MeimuHakurei]

Well, except 2E did not have any problems. After all 2E had the magic fix: the DM could do anything. If you were a player you might not like it, but it was the way of things.

Not sure why you think 2E spellcasters were "better" then fighters.

Have you tried freeform RP yet? It has the same "DM can fix anything" magic, except it's far more open to genres and character concepts, requires no rules memorization or purchase of a rulebook and can be played without miniatures.

[Cluedrew]

That's a resource pool mechanic, and you aren't hurt by it. [...] It's possible for me not to like a limitation mechanic without the limitation being a punishment. It becomes a matter of personal taste. Well, so too is the concept of punishment I guess, but I'll vigorously argue against a punishment limitation and merely agree to disagree if it's just a mechanic I don't like.I suppose I should actually say what I am doing. Which is I'm trying to bin down exactly what you mean by a punishment. Opposed to consequences, limitations or any other drawback that isn't a punishment per say. If you have a really good definition of it that would help but otherwise I am going to try and go by example.

Same set up except the power of the main ability is also linked to the power of a second ability (probably not as strong) that you can use without lowering the power of the two abilities. Is that a punishment? Does it depend on other details? Any further thoughts on the set up?



Well, except 2E did not have any problems. After all 2E had the magic fix: the DM could do anything. If you were a player you might not like it, but it was the way of things.

Not sure why you think 2E spellcasters were "better" then fighters.Have you tried freeform RP yet? It has the same "DM can fix anything" magic, except it's far more open to genres and character concepts, requires no rules memorization or purchase of a rulebook and can be played without miniatures.I did lots of freeform role-playing back... a surprisingly long time ago. Anyways the group eventually split up but it was fun. It's main short coming is I can't theory craft it in my down time.

One reply for Zarrgon directly: if players don't like it then it doesn't actually fix anything, just changes the problem. People not having fun is kind of the definition of a problem in entertainment.

[Ignimortis]

I suppose I should actually say what I am doing. Which is I'm trying to bin down exactly what you mean by a punishment. Opposed to consequences, limitations or any other drawback that isn't a punishment per say. If you have a really good definition of it that would help but otherwise I am going to try and go by example.

Same set up except the power of the main ability is also linked to the power of a second ability (probably not as strong) that you can use without lowering the power of the two abilities. Is that a punishment? Does it depend on other details? Any further thoughts on the set up?


As far as I understand Pex, a punishment would be more than paying resources obviously dedicated to using the ability linked to them. Something like losing HP, suffering a penalty on further rolls that isn't really related to the ability used, that sort of thing.

[InvisibleBison]

Well, except 2E did not have any problems. After all 2E had the magic fix: the DM could do anything. If you were a player you might not like it, but it was the way of things.


You're the final arbiter of the rules within the game. Good players will always recognize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook.

Of course, this doesn't actually fix anything. No amount of rulebook-bestowed authority can compel people to accept a DM that does things they don't like. Authoritarian DMs lead to player revolts, not good gaming.

[NigelWalmsley]

Also, that's just the Oberoni Fallacy. The fact that you can change the game doesn't make the game not broken. Even if we accept that "the DM decides everything" is the best way to play, that doesn't make 2E better, it makes it pointless. I can make stuff up while spending $0 dollars on books. Every penny I spend on rules should allow me to avoid making up an answer somewhere. Otherwise, what's the point?


Well, except 2E did not have any problems. After all 2E had the magic fix: the DM could do anything. If you were a player you might not like it, but it was the way of things.

Then it equally did not have any merits. You can't have it both ways. If the DM solving all the problems mean they don't exist, then the fact that the DM could ignore any good decisions means they don't exist.


The problem here is your only looking at this as the DM vs the Players, and that is one of the worst ways to play the game.

Says the person who's entire approach to the game is to put the DM in charge and demand that the players bow down.


The problem is, that starting in 3E actions do not have predictable consequences

Yes they do. When you cast Teleport, you Teleport. You do not sometimes die because of DM fiat. You don't have to punish people for using their abilities and in fact doing so makes the game worse in obvious and predictable ways.


To run the game of having the characters encounter problem type A, that they must use solution type A to overcome is not a way of great game play.

Again, that is the exact thing you are asking for when you demand that the DM have the right to control everything. When you define a problem mechanically and define mechanical tools, you allow the players to creatively combine their tools to reach solutions. Having every problem be "do the thing the DM thought of" removes all meaningful player decisions.

[Zarrgon]

One reply for Zarrgon directly: if players don't like it then it doesn't actually fix anything, just changes the problem. People not having fun is kind of the definition of a problem in entertainment.

Again, it is more of acceptance. Where people and players can say Ok, that is acceptable to me. So it is not about what a person "likes": no one will like everything.

Almost half of the things in any game are "not fun", but people accept them as part of the game.


Of course, this doesn't actually fix anything. No amount of rulebook-bestowed authority can compel people to accept a DM that does things they don't like. Authoritarian DMs lead to player revolts, not good gaming.

Again, people accept tons and tons of things they don't like in the game just by playing it. Meteor Swarm is not a first level spell and some player does not "like" that...but everyone just says "too bad that is the way of things".

Sure if you really don't like whatever a DM does...positive or negative, you can always leave the game.



Also, that's just the Oberoni Fallacy. The fact that you can change the game doesn't make the game not broken. Even if we accept that "the DM decides everything" is the best way to play, that doesn't make 2E better, it makes it pointless. I can make stuff up while spending $0 dollars on books. Every penny I spend on rules should allow me to avoid making up an answer somewhere. Otherwise, what's the point?

Some people like being creative and making up things; and not just looking things up in a book.




Then it equally did not have any merits. You can't have it both ways. If the DM solving all the problems mean they don't exist, then the fact that the DM could ignore any good decisions means they don't exist.

????




Says the person who's entire approach to the game is to put the DM in charge and demand that the players bow down.

It's the best way to play a RPG in my view.



Yes they do. When you cast Teleport, you Teleport. You do not sometimes die because of DM fiat. You don't have to punish people for using their abilities and in fact doing so makes the game worse in obvious and predictable ways.

The game rules do have plenty of rules about teleport, and magic items and spells and such that effect teleport.

But I really wonder if when you "read your book" as you say you do, you see: Up until 3.5E the spell Teleport says in the description: areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

So that is right there IN your rule book. So do you use that rule at all, or do you by DM fiat choose to ignore it?



Again, that is the exact thing you are asking for when you demand that the DM have the right to control everything. When you define a problem mechanically and define mechanical tools, you allow the players to creatively combine their tools to reach solutions. Having every problem be "do the thing the DM thought of" removes all meaningful player decisions.

I'd ask why you think it can't be both? Why must it be Caster/Martial Disparity or DM way?

Why can't a DM just alter things a tiny bit.....just enough to stop the casters from ruining the game and bring the martial ones up in power? Why in your view can a DM not do this?

[Telok]

As far as I understand Pex, a punishment would be more than paying resources obviously dedicated to using the ability linked to them. Something like losing HP, suffering a penalty on further rolls that isn't really related to the ability used, that sort of thing.

I think he's using "punishment" as meaning that the character may suffer harm for using an ability written on the character sheet.

For example if a d&d 5e character had an ability called "swinging attack from rope" that required successful dc15 strength and dexterity checks to swing from a rope and make an attack at advantage that does an extra 10d6 damage, but failing either check did 2d6 damage and dropped you prone next to the enemy. That would be a "punishment" ability if it was a class ability, because there's a non-trivial chance of the character being directly hurt by using one of their class abilities. Sort of like the old d&d 2e and 3e teleports, contact other plane spells, ad&d wish, and all the warhammer games magic/psychic stuff.

[JNAProductions]

I'd ask why you think it can't be both? Why must it be Caster/Martial Disparity or DM way?

Why can't a DM just alter things a tiny bit.....just enough to stop the casters from ruining the game and bring the martial ones up in power? Why in your view can a DM not do this?

Why should a DM have to?

And before you make a strawman, no one is asking for perfect balance. That's impossible as soon as you add a second player. But there's a vast gulf between what most would consider good enough balance, and what some systems (notably 3.P) have.

[Psyren]

That's impossible as soon as you add a second player. But there's a vast gulf between what most would consider good enough balance, and what some systems (notably 3.P) have.

"Most" do consider 3.P good enough. Unless you're only sampling the forum threads that complain about it, rather than players as a whole.

[JNAProductions]

"Most" do consider 3.P good enough. Unless you're only sampling the forum threads that complain about it, rather than players as a whole.

No one I've met here or in gaming stores considers 3.P to have anything even vaguely approaching good balance. Anecdotal, sure, but I doubt you've more than anecdotes either. (If you do happen to run a polling company for games or something, though, let us know. That'd be good info.)

Which is not to say it's not FUN. It's just horribly balanced.

[Psyren]

No one I've met here or in gaming stores considers 3.P to have anything even vaguely approaching good balance. Anecdotal, sure, but I doubt you've more than anecdotes either. (If you do happen to run a polling company for games or something, though, let us know. That'd be good info.)

I define "good enough" as "people don't care enough about it to stop paying for mass quantities of books" - so yes, I have much more than anecdotes.


Which is not to say it's not FUN. It's just horribly balanced.

I genuinely think you'll be happier if you don't care so much about "balance." As you yourself mentioned, no system with more than one player is going to get it right.

[JNAProductions]

I define "good enough" as "people don't care enough about it to stop paying for mass quantities of books" - so yes, I have much more than anecdotes.

I genuinely think you'll be happier if you don't care so much about "balance." As you yourself mentioned, no system with more than one player is going to get it right.

Again, they're fun. But they're not balanced. I could use a real-world example, but the first that comes to mind is most definitely against the rules.

Popular=/=balanced. Popular only equals popular. And, if we're going by the logic that popular DOES equal balanced, then 4E was less balanced than 3.5. Does that seem sensible at all?

[Pex]

I suppose I should actually say what I am doing. Which is I'm trying to bin down exactly what you mean by a punishment. Opposed to consequences, limitations or any other drawback that isn't a punishment per say. If you have a really good definition of it that would help but otherwise I am going to try and go by example.

Same set up except the power of the main ability is also linked to the power of a second ability (probably not as strong) that you can use without lowering the power of the two abilities. Is that a punishment? Does it depend on other details? Any further thoughts on the set up?



As far as I understand Pex, a punishment would be more than paying resources obviously dedicated to using the ability linked to them. Something like losing HP, suffering a penalty on further rolls that isn't really related to the ability used, that sort of thing.

Yes, this. A resource pool dedicated to using a power where you spend from that resource to use the power and you could end with no more resource to use the ability for the rest of the game day is fine. That's spell slots, mana, X uses per day/rest. It's a subsystem to use the ability. "Punishment" comes in where you are worse off elsewhere - closer to death for loss of hit points, become more vulnerable to enemies because your defenses are weakened, lose player agency by being denied the ability to do things or can't do them well.

If you like I can concede there are degrees of punishment. It's technically a punishment as I define it, but it isn't so harsh. For example, in 3E/Pathfinder you suffer -2 AC for charging. I don't like it, but it's not crippling the character I can get over it. Contrast this with the 3E Unearthed Arcana spellcasting variant where your character can go insane for casting a spell, losing the ability to do anything until cured. No way would I play that game. When I played that SEGA Star Wars game where I had to lose hit points to use the Force it was a disaster. My character drops every combat because the bad guys are taking away my hit points and I'm taking away my hit points even when there's no combat telling people these aren't the droids they're looking for. The DM had to give me max hit points just so I could play the game.

[Psyren]

Again, they're fun. But they're not balanced. I could use a real-world example, but the first that comes to mind is most definitely against the rules.

Popular=/=balanced. Popular only equals popular. And, if we're going by the logic that popular DOES equal balanced, then 4E was less balanced than 3.5. Does that seem sensible at all?

You seem to be arguing past me. I'm not saying 3.P has "good balance". I'm saying it's "good enough," which was the phrase you initially used before shifting the goalposts.

And yes, popularity is absolutely a measure of what is "good enough." Because if it weren't good enough, people wouldn't be paying for it. Simple.

[JNAProductions]

You seem to be arguing past me. I'm not saying 3.P has "good balance". I'm saying it's "good enough," which was the phrase you initially used before shifting the goalposts.

And yes, popularity is absolutely a measure of what is "good enough." Because if it weren't good enough, people wouldn't be paying for it. Simple.

Eh... That doesn't mean people like the imbalance. It could just as easily indicate they like the wealth of options, and are good enough at the system that they can avoid the pitfalls of imbalance.

I use a printer in my house. It's awful. It sucks. But it prints, if you finagle the paper just right-that's technically good enough. What I and pretty much everyone I know well looks for in a good TTRPG system is one that DOESN'T require all that finagling. A system where you can just build what seems cool, or follow the recommendations in the book for how to build PCs, and end up with a party where no one's gonna be overshadowing someone else consistently.

So I guess it's good enough as-in, people are willing to put up with it. In that respect, I'll concede to you. But, having argued in other threads, i wholeheartedly disagree with your general position that the imbalance is desirable.

[NigelWalmsley]

Almost half of the things in any game are "not fun", but people accept them as part of the game.

Neither part of this is true. Many games are mostly fun things, and many people do in fact reject games for being miserable.


Again, people accept tons and tons of things they don't like in the game just by playing it. Meteor Swarm is not a first level spell and some player does not "like" that...but everyone just says "too bad that is the way of things".

So when the rules produce an outcome the players don't like, we follow them, but when they produce an outcome the DM doesn't like, we ignore them? That seems like a pretty awful way to play.


Some people like being creative and making up things; and not just looking things up in a book.

Sure. But it turns out you can do that in any system you want, or no system at all. The merit of a set of rules is necessarily the merit of those rules, not the merit of the things you make up while owning some particular book.


So that is right there IN your rule book. So do you use that rule at all, or do you by DM fiat choose to ignore it?

Sure, I don't ban Forbiddence, the spell that rule is referring to. I even use it sometimes, both as a player and as a DM. What I don't do is arbitrarily declare that the villain's base was totally always an "area of strong physical or magical energy" and use that to shut down PCs when they outsmart me. That's the difference between good and bad DMing.


I'd ask why you think it can't be both? Why must it be Caster/Martial Disparity or DM way?

I genuinely don't understand what you think you're talking about. Those things are completely unrelated. It's like asking "why must we either use dicepools, or play in a fantasy setting" or "why can't we have both Elves and point-buy"? The things don't trade off. We could absolutely have a balanced system where the DM doesn't decide everything by fiat.


Why can't a DM just alter things a tiny bit.....just enough to stop the casters from ruining the game and bring the martial ones up in power? Why in your view can a DM not do this?

They can. But it's generally a bad idea, because those fixes will typically be worse than the problems they're intended to fix. Further, such fixes should be unnecessary. If we can all agree that e.g. the Monk should be proficient with unarmed strikes, the rules of the game should have said that to begin with, and the fact that they don't is a problem with the game.


And yes, popularity is absolutely a measure of what is "good enough." Because if it weren't good enough, people wouldn't be paying for it. Simple.

Your analysis on this issue is still nonsense. The fact that something is successful does not mean that all its decisions are "good enough". It means the product as a whole is "good enough". You're trying to prove that A > 0 by proving A + B + C > 0, but that fundamentally doesn't make any sense. In my experience, your claim could only be reasonably construed as true by claiming "not so bad as to be worth abandoning something I like" means "good enough".

[Max_Killjoy]

"Not bad enough to be intolerable" is hardly a functional metric for good, or for fixed.

As for popularity... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[Psyren]

"Not bad enough to be intolerable" is hardly a functional metric for good, or for fixed.

As for popularity... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

That fallacy applies to quality, not to the rationale behind design decisions.


But, having argued in other threads, i wholeheartedly disagree with your general position that the imbalance is desirable.

I'm open to a balanced alternative that is credible, allows differentiation between caster and martial capabilities, is at least as easy to pick up and play as D&D, and has D&D's wealth of open-content options/supplemental material. When you find it, let me know, until then I'm quite happy where I am.


Your analysis on this issue is still nonsense. The fact that something is successful does not mean that all its decisions are "good enough". It means the product as a whole is "good enough". You're trying to prove that A > 0 by proving A + B + C > 0, but that fundamentally doesn't make any sense. In my experience, your claim could only be reasonably construed as true by claiming "not so bad as to be worth abandoning something I like" means "good enough".

The "product as a whole" being "good enough" means not enough people care about "balance" to the extent that you do to make it not "good enough." If you want to change that, change the people.

[Zarrgon]

Why should a DM have to?

There is no reason they "have" to, it's more of an option.


No one I've met here or in gaming stores considers 3.P to have anything even vaguely approaching good balance.

I hereby say and state for the official record: 3.P is perfectly balanced: there is nothing "wrong" with the game. Any problems people have are how they choose to play the game. So now you know one.

Also balance is an illusion and does not matter anyway.


What I and pretty much everyone I know well looks for in a good TTRPG system is one that DOESN'T require all that finagling.

I hereby officially state I am of the Other Players that DO NOT even come close to being your "everyone". I represent the thousands of Other Players that look for in a TTRPG: A simple set of base suggestions that can be used to create a unique fun game experience.


Neither part of this is true. Many games are mostly fun things, and many people do in fact reject games for being miserable.

Loss of anything like hit points is something many players don't like and would say is unfun....and yet this is accepted in many games.

Nearly every game has a chance for failure when a character attempts an action. Many players don't like and would say is unfun....and yet this is accepted in many games.




So when the rules produce an outcome the players don't like, we follow them, but when they produce an outcome the DM doesn't like, we ignore them? That seems like a pretty awful way to play.

Well, you are comparing apples and oranges. After all the DM will never ever dislike an outcome when they control the whole game world.



Sure. But it turns out you can do that in any system you want, or no system at all. The merit of a set of rules is necessarily the merit of those rules, not the merit of the things you make up while owning some particular book.

Merit?




Sure, I don't ban Forbiddence, the spell that rule is referring to. I even use it sometimes, both as a player and as a DM. What I don't do is arbitrarily declare that the villain's base was totally always an "area of strong physical or magical energy" and use that to shut down PCs when they outsmart me. That's the difference between good and bad DMing.

I agree it's the difference between good and bad DMing. After all it takes a pretty bad DM to read "area of strong physical or magical energy" and somehow read in their mind "AH, they mean ONLY the Forbiddence spell and nothing else". And a bad DM would never wonder, "Hum, if they only meant the Forbiddence spell, I wonder why they did not just type that?". And a bad DM would arbitrarily declare that a villans base is defenseless to anything the players wish to do.




I genuinely don't understand what you think you're talking about. Those things are completely unrelated. It's like asking "why must we either use dicepools, or play in a fantasy setting" or "why can't we have both Elves and point-buy"? The things don't trade off. We could absolutely have a balanced system where the DM doesn't decide everything by fiat.

You will never get a perfect balanced system...or anything else really...from any other person. It's a simple truth of life: if you want something "perfect", to you, then YOU must do it yourself.




They can. But it's generally a bad idea, because those fixes will typically be worse than the problems they're intended to fix. Further, such fixes should be unnecessary. If we can all agree that e.g. the Monk should be proficient with unarmed strikes, the rules of the game should have said that to begin with, and the fact that they don't is a problem with the game.

This is my above point: "They" will never do it right. Only we as individuals can make it right for our own games.

[NigelWalmsley]

Loss of anything like hit points is something many players don't like and would say is unfun....and yet this is accepted in many games.

I wouldn't say that. In fact, I don't think I've ever met someone who would say that.


Well, you are comparing apples and oranges. After all the DM will never ever dislike an outcome when they control the whole game world.

Having one participant who's preferences are absolute definitely seems like a good way to make everyone happy. I can't imagine anyone feeling frustrated by a game where there was someone who got to overrule any decision they made.


And a bad DM would never wonder, "Hum, if they only meant the Forbiddence spell, I wonder why they did not just type that?".

If they meant for Monks to be proficient with unarmed strikes, why aren't they? It turns out the editing for RPGs is not super great.


And a bad DM would arbitrarily declare that a villans base is defenseless to anything the players wish to do.

I agree. A good DM would use the tools the system provides -- like Forbiddence -- to ensure that the base isn't defenseless. But if he missed something, he would accept that, just as a good player would accept that making a stupid tactical decision might lead to an outcome they don't like. Throwing a tantrum doesn't magically become okay when you switch sides of the DM screen.


You will never get a perfect balanced system...or anything else really...from any other person. It's a simple truth of life: if you want something "perfect", to you, then YOU must do it yourself.

I'll never buy a perfect car, or a perfect pizza, or a perfect laptop. And yet I still buy those things, and I still feel entirely justified in complaining when they are bad, or comparing their relative quality. Complains like this are just spreading FUD and trying to convince people to accept bad rules. But we don't need to do that. Games can, and should, be better than they are.

[Telok]

"Not bad enough to be intolerable" is hardly a functional metric for good, or for fixed.

As for popularity... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

I've always considered 'popular' to be something like [popularity = quality + advertising + availability - (knowledge of other options + availability of other options + quality of other options)].

For example: I play in a StarFinder game despite that system's fericous mediocrity and serious flaws because most people in my area don't know about many/any scifi rpgs, they don't own hard copies of them which they would have to mail order (often paying overseas shipping costs if they'll ship despite being in the same country on the same continent with a nice paved road all the way), and they haven't heard these games advertised in stores or seen other people play them. So I'm stuck either running a scifi rpg myself (and I've done so a number of times), playing playing a sort of 'lowest common denominator' almost-sci fi rpg, or never getting to play anything but faux mideval fantasy rpgs. Starfinder has literally the weakest and hand wavy-est spaceship rules I've ever seen, but I'll play it because there are no other games with spaceships available for me to be a player in. So are StarFinders spaceship rules "good enough" to be "popular"? Well it turns out that they are if you don't have any other options.

Edit: looking at the equation maybe it should be [popularity = ((quality + advertising)*availability) - ((other options quality + other options knowledge)*other options availability)]

[Max_Killjoy]

That fallacy applies to quality, not to the rationale behind design decisions.


That's not really a distinction when "but it's popular" is used to defend the quality of a design decision.




I've always considered 'popular' to be something like [popularity = quality + advertising + availability - (knowledge of other options + availability of other options + quality of other options)].

For example: I play in a StarFinder game despite that system's fericous mediocrity and serious flaws because most people in my area don't know about many/any scifi rpgs, they don't own hard copies of them which they would have to mail order (often paying overseas shipping costs if they'll ship despite being in the same country on the same continent with a nice paved road all the way), and they haven't heard these games advertised in stores or seen other people play them. So I'm stuck either running a scifi rpg myself (and I've done so a number of times), playing playing a sort of 'lowest common denominator' almost-sci fi rpg, or never getting to play anything but faux mideval fantasy rpgs. Starfinder has literally the weakest and hand wavy-est spaceship rules I've ever seen, but I'll play it because there are no other games with spaceships available for me to be a player in. So are StarFinders spaceship rules "good enough" to be "popular"? Well it turns out that they are if you don't have any other options.

Edit: looking at the equation maybe it should be [popularity = ((quality + advertising)*availability) - ((other options quality + other options knowledge)*other options availability)]


Everyone has to make that choice for themselves.

I have found that my un-enjoyment of low-quality games is so intense that it ends up ruining the game for others as well, so I will choose "not gaming" over "low-quality gaming".

[Psyren]

The operative phrase JNAP used that I was arguing against was "most would consider good enough." It is objectively provable that "most" did exactly that.

Now, as Telok mentioned, a big part of that could very well be that "most" people aren't aware of some superior option that is simply flying under the radar. If you are, and your playgroup is not, the burden of broadening their horizons falls on you - assuming you care enough about that superior option to want to play it. But if you don't care enough, you can't reasonably expect other people to care enough on your behalf either.


That's not really a distinction when "but it's popular" is used to defend the quality of a design decision.

I'm defending its reasonableness, not its quality. At some point, you have to stop designing and ship. They stopped at a point they felt was "good enough" and the market agreed.



I have found that my un-enjoyment of low-quality games is so intense that it ends up ruining the game for others as well, so I will choose "not gaming" over "low-quality gaming".

And that's a perfectly reasonable stance for you. It is not, however, for "most" - even if they share your views on what constitutes "low-quality gaming."

[Telok]

I have found that my un-enjoyment of low-quality games is so intense that it ends up ruining the game for others as well, so I will choose "not gaming" over "low-quality gaming".

StarFinder turns out to be strongly unintentionally silly/funny. You could very easily hack it into a d20 Paranoia/comedy variant. The cross dressing space pirate walrus in a cheerleading outfit having a ground movement of 80' and doing parkour while people flying around in high end jet packs max out at 60' and have to make skill checks or crash is very very silly. We've had some good laughs.

[Cluedrew]

Yes, this. A resource pool dedicated to using a power where you spend from that resource to use the power and you could end with no more resource to use the ability for the rest of the game day is fine. That's spell slots, mana, X uses per day/rest. It's a subsystem to use the ability. "Punishment" comes in where you are worse off elsewhere - closer to death for loss of hit points, become more vulnerable to enemies because your defenses are weakened, lose player agency by being denied the ability to do things or can't do them well.What about my example? The subsystem has two abilities: "burn" which drains your pool (presumably for a big effect), and "channel" which gets weaker as your pool empties. That is elsewhere but they are still tied together.

On D&D's Quality: How good D&D is in general doesn't matter. At most we could ague if a game that is like D&D but doesn't have caster/martial disparity would be better, but even that is kind of an aside to the topic which is how one would fix it if you wanted to (that is what step 0 is for).

[Psyren]

What about my example? The subsystem has two abilities: "burn" which drains your pool (presumably for a big effect), and "channel" which gets weaker as your pool empties. That is elsewhere but they are still tied together.

On D&D's Quality: How good D&D is in general doesn't matter. At most we could ague if a game that is like D&D but doesn't have caster/martial disparity would be better, but even that is kind of an aside to the topic which is how one would fix it if you wanted to (that is what step 0 is for).

Fair enough - moving away from D&D, I made a "system-agnostic" point (or at least, one that I thought was system-agnostic) and I'm not sure if you saw it Cluedrew. I'll quote it here as a refresher:


I was only using D&D for examples too. My main point is system-agnostic, and could be summed up as follows:

When you're designing your system, you have to decide not just what a magic-user and a non-magic-user can do, but how they do it. And part of that "how" includes the advantages and drawbacks to each approach. All of those things ultimately play a role in "balance."

As one (again, system-agnostic) example - if a spellcaster can use magic to unlock a door in under six seconds, while a thief with his lockpicks will take a full minute to do the same thing, that is clearly unbalanced in favor of the caster, and there's no reason to go with the thief because the caster's approach is objectively better. But that's comparing the two approaches in a vacuum; in reality the true obstacle may have additional factors to consider. Maybe the caster can only do that 3 times, but there are 7 locked doors the party needs to get through. Or maybe the caster can do it all 7 times, but at the cost of the lightning he needs to help fight whatever is behind Door 5. Or casting that 7 times makes him too tired/drained to recall everyone back out in an emergency. Or perhaps he has enough unlocking spells to get the party through every door, but they all require a loud magic word that alerts the enemies inside ,while the lockpicks don't. Maybe the spell has more than one, or even ALL of those disdavantages.

Are the two approaches still unbalanced against one another? That is the kind of thing that makes "balance" discussions less straightforward.

The short version of the above is "do you think it's possible to balance casters with martials, even if they have different capabilities, by giving the former drawbacks that the latter doesn't possess?" (The specific example - the mage being able to pick a lock in seconds by talking to it - can be swapped out if needed.)

[Man_Over_Game]

Fair enough - moving away from D&D, I made a "system-agnostic" point (or at least, one that I thought was system-agnostic) and I'm not sure if you saw it Cluedrew. I'll quote it here as a refresher:



The short version of the above is "do you think it's possible to balance casters with martials, even if they have different capabilities, by giving the former drawbacks that the latter doesn't possess?" (The specific example - the mage being able to pick a lock in seconds by talking to it - can be swapped out if needed.)

I think the answer could be "Yes", if the weaknesses and strengths in all aspects of play (Social, Exploration, Combat, Creativity, Consistency, etc) were provided in a way that were impossible to misunderstand.

Some players don't care that all a Fighter does is the Attack button. Some players don't care that Fighters don't do all the cool things Wizards do, or even do the boring things as well.

It becomes a problem when a player who does care about those things either doesn't know about them or doesn't have a means of fixing them. Players are allowed to make bad decisions, as long as they know what was a good decision and why.

-----------------------------

The reason this is complicated is because we're describing balance between different methods of play, and saying someone's Role Playing should "counter" another player's Strategy Gaming is kinda stupid.

----------------------

So I see effectively two solutions to "balance":

1: Make every choice have equal weight in all styles of play (the Beast Mastery power lets you talk to beasts and beastfolk, lets you summon a beast in combat, and lets you use your summoned beast to help you with two skills they can reasonably assist with).

2: Make every choice reflect on what style of play it focuses on, as well as the potential relevance of that option in those playstyles (gaining extra languages may not be very useful in a campaign where everyone speaks a common language, but it may be valuable for an unassuming spy).

The second option may sound like common sense, but it does draw a level of professionalism from the developer. That is, they understand the strengths and weaknesses of their game and its options, rather than letting the players figure it out for themselves. If a developer doesn't feel comfortable doing that, then maybe they should make content they can be confident about.

[Cluedrew]

To Psyren: At a high level that is kind of how all balancing works is it not? Give things different capabilities, limitations and drawbacks. So I guess my answer would be yes. The two wrinkles in this are A) making sure they are actually balanced and B) making sure they are fun to play. And neither of those are simple problems to untangle. What with the fuzzy definition of balance, balancing already be a hard issue and different people like different things.

The last one has also come up with a lot in this thread as well. I guess the best way would be to give characters mechanical themes so you can use the mechanics you like. Then you have to make them align with the flavour descriptions for communication and on it goes.

At the high level view that is all I have to say. I could comment on different balancing options you presented. Sure why not:
Limited Uses: Could work, especially in conjunction with some of the other choices. This gets a bit weird if the limited option is more powerful than the unlimited one which within a character makes sense but here could lead to the specialist turning to the generalist when they have failed.
Global Limited Pool: I think this is the early D&D model - maybe without guessing what you will need before hand - which apparently worked but a lot of people didn't like it anyways. … I'm trying to think of something intelligent to say but I don't know if it is significantly different than the last one.
Side Effects: I like this one more as part of a larger pattern of people can do things outside of their wheelhouse but just not as well (and not just 10% chance of success). The thief can stealthily pick locks. The wizard makes a loud sound and maybe uses up some of there resources. The barbarian can also open the door with a loud sound, but then can't close it again afterwards.

[prabe]

I think the answer could be "Yes", if the weaknesses and strengths in all aspects of play (Social, Exploration, Combat, Creativity, Consistency, etc) were provided in a way that were impossible to misunderstand.

I don't disagree with the principle (or with the other substance here), but I don't know that it's possible to write a rule so clearly that someone, somewhere, won't misunderstand it. ;-) That doesn't mean it's not worth the effort; just means you need to keep your expectations realistic.

[Zarrgon]

I wouldn't say that. In fact, I don't think I've ever met someone who would say that.

Well, guess you could try and meet more people.




Having one participant who's preferences are absolute definitely seems like a good way to make everyone happy. I can't imagine anyone feeling frustrated by a game where there was someone who got to overrule any decision they made.

Ok?



If they meant for Monks to be proficient with unarmed strikes, why aren't they? It turns out the editing for RPGs is not super great.

Yea and the creative ideas, and the writing and...well, everything. The thing is they will always be people are imperfect, so the game will be imperfect.




I agree. A good DM would use the tools the system provides -- like Forbiddence -- to ensure that the base isn't defenseless. But if he missed something, he would accept that, just as a good player would accept that making a stupid tactical decision might lead to an outcome they don't like. Throwing a tantrum doesn't magically become okay when you switch sides of the DM screen.

Throughout the vastness of D&D there are a lot more ways to effect teleport then just that one spell. And then their are custom DM creations too.

So sure you want the DM to jump through a hoop or two to make you feel better, but that does not really change the outcome. All the DM needs is the system mastery and skill to find and use whatever they want.

Sure, a bad DM might miss something, but then that is why they are a bad DM afterall.

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't disagree with the principle (or with the other substance here), but I don't know that it's possible to write a rule so clearly that someone, somewhere, won't misunderstand it. ;-) That doesn't mean it's not worth the effort; just means you need to keep your expectations realistic.

It wouldn't have to be too much writing. The key note is providing the player just enough information to understand the consequences of their actions.

We do this in video games using consistent, simple feedback.

For example, a power that invokes sentience into your weapon could be listed as:

Combat: xxx++
Social: x+++
Exploration: +

Where each 'x' represents its bare minimum impact at face value, and each '+' represents its potential based on other synergistic options the player can choose or how the player's actions/choices can influence the power's use.


Something like "Gain 3 languages" doesn't do anything in combat if there aren't mechanics to use it in combat, and it doesn't do anything in an exploration scenario for the same reason. It can be valuable in a social environment, but that's only relevant if the campaign has an emphasis on social gameplay.

With something like this, all you'd need to know is what kind of game you expect your table to be playing. With knowing the expected results of that option for every aspect of play, and what kind of game the players expect to be playing, a player can make an educated decision about their actions.

If they choose to be bad in combat, that's a choice they know they chose.

[Tanarii]

Something like "Gain 3 languages" doesn't do anything in combat if there aren't mechanics to use it in combat, and it doesn't do anything in an exploration scenario for the same reason. It can be valuable in a social environment, but that's only relevant if the campaign has an emphasis on social gameplay.

If the DM and players can't find a way to use language in combat or exploration without mechanics that's not the game's problem.

[Pex]

What about my example? The subsystem has two abilities: "burn" which drains your pool (presumably for a big effect), and "channel" which gets weaker as your pool empties. That is elsewhere but they are still tied together.

On D&D's Quality: How good D&D is in general doesn't matter. At most we could ague if a game that is like D&D but doesn't have caster/martial disparity would be better, but even that is kind of an aside to the topic which is how one would fix it if you wanted to (that is what step 0 is for).

Already answered. You must have missed it. I'm ok with it because it is its own resource pool that doesn't otherwise hurt the character. It reminds me of the Psionic Die mechanic of a recent Unearthed Arcana.

[Man_Over_Game]

If the DM and players can't find a way to use language in combat or exploration without mechanics that's not the game's problem.

Maybe not the game's fault, but it is the game's problem.

You perfect the formula beforehand so that there is as little room for error as possible when things come up that you didn't plan for.

I just watched an automated quadropter play tennis with a guy on YouTube. If we can make a math formula that can do that, it's not so far-fetched that we can figure out a way to make irrelevant features a thing of the past.

It's not up to the guy playing tennis to figure it out, either. That's not his job.

[NigelWalmsley]

Well, guess you could try and meet more people.

Yes, clearly the reason your claims seem unsupported is because I haven't meant the vast body of people who hate TTRPGs despite playing them, not because they are nonsense.


Yea and the creative ideas, and the writing and...well, everything. The thing is they will always be people are imperfect, so the game will be imperfect.

Again, the doesn't mean the perfect should be the enemy of the good. The game will never have perfect rules. That's not an excuse to ignore the problems with the rules that do exist.


So sure you want the DM to jump through a hoop or two to make you feel better, but that does not really change the outcome. All the DM needs is the system mastery and skill to find and use whatever they want.

Requiring the DM to use defined tools does change the outcome. It allows the PCs to make informed decisions. Forbiddence has specific, defined effects. You can plan around it and make reasonable choices. "It's a high energy area lol" does not. That's the difference between good DMing and bad DMing.

[Xervous]

Requiring the DM to use defined tools does change the outcome. It allows the PCs to make informed decisions. Forbiddence has specific, defined effects. You can plan around it and make reasonable choices. "It's a high energy area lol" does not. That's the difference between good DMing and bad DMing.

If recent 5e discussions about climbing trees are anything to go off of there is a great deal of potential benefit in having defined baselines to reference. Rules and mechanics are needed to a point to define what the system/setting wants to be. If a system has only so few facets it’s more a collection of broad strokes that loosely guide freeform play. Player understandings and expectations cannot exist without experiences, whether that being a GM training the players through examples and events in the course of play or each player being able to draw from rulebooks to establish the baseline for setting and system expectations.

An agreed baseline must exist for system features and choices to be compared. In absence of such a concrete foundation (the given descriptions of 2e and company have such absences) there quite literally is a void of content capable of being assessed for balance in that given section of the system. If various 2e and AD&D resolution mechanics boil down to ‘ask your GM’ that is in no way balanced or unbalanced, it’s simply fiat.

[Tanarii]

Maybe not the game's fault, but it is the game's problem.

You perfect the formula beforehand so that there is as little room for error as possible when things come up that you didn't plan for.

I just watched an automated quadropter play tennis with a guy on YouTube. If we can make a math formula that can do that, it's not so far-fetched that we can figure out a way to make irrelevant features a thing of the past.

It's not up to the guy playing tennis to figure it out, either. That's not his job.
What's that got to do with the price of milk?

Being able to communicate or receive information has it's own value. Including in combat and exploration. It already is a 'mechanic'.

[Psyren]

I think the answer could be "Yes", if the weaknesses and strengths in all aspects of play (Social, Exploration, Combat, Creativity, Consistency, etc) were provided in a way that were impossible to misunderstand.

Some players don't care that all a Fighter does is the Attack button. Some players don't care that Fighters don't do all the cool things Wizards do, or even do the boring things as well.

It becomes a problem when a player who does care about those things either doesn't know about them or doesn't have a means of fixing them. Players are allowed to make bad decisions, as long as they know what was a good decision and why.

I agree with this, but I also think that some of these "bad decisions" are pretty intuitive. For example, wanting to be a sneaky character and choosing to play a Barbarian or Paladin would be a bad decision in most game systems, but it's one that even players unfamiliar with those systems are unlikely to make. Could that likelihood be improved further if the devs included a "DON'T PLAY A PALADIN IF YOU...WANT TO BE SNEAKY" section? Probably, but when you're trying to cram as much useful information into your rulebook as possible, sometimes (re)stating the obvious has to get cut.

Concerning your "aspects of play" - I'm only familiar with the first three pillars, are you drawing from a list somewhere?


-----------------------------

The reason this is complicated is because we're describing balance between different methods of play, and saying someone's Role Playing should "counter" another player's Strategy Gaming is kinda stupid.

----------------------

Maybe it's because my coffee hasn't been absorbed yet but I'm not sure I'm parsing this one correctly. In the example I gave (a wizard and a rogue overcoming locked doors), neither character is using "roleplaying" to solve the problem, it's all mechanical.



So I see effectively two solutions to "balance":

1: Make every choice have equal weight in all styles of play (the Beast Mastery power lets you talk to beasts and beastfolk, lets you summon a beast in combat, and lets you use your summoned beast to help you with two skills they can reasonably assist with).

2: Make every choice reflect on what style of play it focuses on, as well as the potential relevance of that option in those playstyles (gaining extra languages may not be very useful in a campaign where everyone speaks a common language, but it may be valuable for an unassuming spy).

The second option may sound like common sense, but it does draw a level of professionalism from the developer. That is, they understand the strengths and weaknesses of their game and its options, rather than letting the players figure it out for themselves. If a developer doesn't feel comfortable doing that, then maybe they should make content they can be confident about.

I think a good synonym for "choice" in this context is "sphere" so I'll use them interchangeably here.

1) The issue I have with #1 is that it breaks down when the choice doesn't plausibly have equal weight to every problem. Your example of Beast Mastery does, because it's a sphere that can include varied concepts/approaches like summoning and control of animals, which are pretty intuitively toolbox sorts of powers that can easily have utility and combat applications. But something like, say, Fire is more limited in application. You could solve that by broadening "Fire" to "Energy" and say it lets you talk to elementals and boosts skills like acrobatics and athletics by charging your limbs with energy or something, but now you've actually passed Beast Mastery because Energy can do most of what it can do but also plausibly cover things like blasting, battlefield control, and teleportation/rapid movement. Striking that balance of plausibility is the hardest part of this for me.

2) Similar to the above problem, for this to work you need to have choices that all focus on different things - the moment you have one that covers more than the others, or that does something unique while also doing something another choice can do, "balance" has been lost. But if you remove abilities from a sphere that people expect to be there, your game feels anemic.

[Zarrgon]

Again, the doesn't mean the perfect should be the enemy of the good. The game will never have perfect rules. That's not an excuse to ignore the problems with the rules that do exist.

The published game written by other will never have perfect rules for you. But you can take their base ideas and make a perfect game for you.




Requiring the DM to use defined tools does change the outcome. It allows the PCs to make informed decisions. Forbiddence has specific, defined effects. You can plan around it and make reasonable choices. "It's a high energy area lol" does not. That's the difference between good DMing and bad DMing.

You are saying you like a binary game with only two choices or options. And that is fine. Many others like myself prefer the open and endless choices and options where anything can and might happen.

I don't want players doing a dull robotic game: "ok, we know the bad guys places has the official spell Forbidance cast on it and nothing else, so lets plan our attack".

I want the players doing the amazing game of wonder; "Ok, the bad guys place might be protected by anything, so we will just have to use our wilts and plan an attack"

See it's two huge different styles of game play. (neither is right or wrong BTW)



I agree with this, but I also think that some of these "bad decisions" are pretty intuitive. For example, wanting to be a sneaky character and choosing to play a Barbarian or Paladin would be a bad decision in most game systems, but it's one that even players unfamiliar with those systems are unlikely to make. Could that likelihood be improved further if the devs included a "DON'T PLAY A PALADIN IF YOU...WANT TO BE SNEAKY" section? Probably, but when you're trying to cram as much useful information into your rulebook as possible, sometimes (re)stating the obvious has to get cut.

I'd also note that D&D has always tried to keep the core of the game as generic as possible.

You can make a sneaky barbarian or paladin in D&D. You can even make a great character and have a ton of fun with that character. Now sure if you play by the numbers, the sneaky barbarian or paladin might only have like half the numbers of the super optimized demi god of sneak character........but for a LOT of players that won't matter as they are not playing the numbers game anyway.

Though a lot of other games have this as a trap as only the Sneak class can take the sneak skill or things like that.


And, again, this also has the game play style problem:

Encounter: sleeping monster in front of a door on the side of a mountian

Spellcaster: turns invisible/silent/whatever magic, gives the DM a high five and they both dance around the table singing how awesome magic is.

Over optimized demi god: Needs to roll good, but they will likely make it. Dm will grumble 'whatever'.

The sneaky paladin or barbarian: with their low sneak unlikely to beat the direct roll vs the DC. The player wonders if they can do or try something and the DM screams them down and says the only way past is by taking the one single only path so just roll, fail and have your character die already. The player complains and the DM just says "martial suck!"

[Cluedrew]

Already answered. You must have missed it. I'm ok with it because it is its own resource pool that doesn't otherwise hurt the character. It reminds me of the Psionic Die mechanic of a recent Unearthed Arcana.I think I did I just didn't realize what you were saying. So by "worse off elsewhere" you mean something outside of the subsystem?

[Tanarii]

I think I did I just didn't realize what you were saying. So by "worse off elsewhere" you mean something outside of the subsystem?

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced... [b]ut I know it when I see it ..."

[Psyren]

I'd also note that D&D has always tried to keep the core of the game as generic as possible.

You can make a sneaky barbarian or paladin in D&D. You can even make a great character and have a ton of fun with that character. Now sure if you play by the numbers, the sneaky barbarian or paladin might only have like half the numbers of the super optimized demi god of sneak character........but for a LOT of players that won't matter as they are not playing the numbers game anyway.

Though a lot of other games have this as a trap as only the Sneak class can take the sneak skill or things like that.

Note that by "bad decision" I don't mean that the paladin is incapable of sneaking, rather that making him a good sneak will involve some system mastery and most of his class features (including chassis, armor etc) are unlikely to help with that. In some systems like D&D, he can still invest in things like race, trait/background, magic gear, consumables, unintuitive tactics (like removing and stowing his plate) etc. to maximize his chances, but it's still not a synergistic strategy for him (generally speaking.)


And, again, this also has the game play style problem:

Encounter: sleeping monster in front of a door on the side of a mountian

Spellcaster: turns invisible/silent/whatever magic, gives the DM a high five and they both dance around the table singing how awesome magic is.

Over optimized demi god: Needs to roll good, but they will likely make it. Dm will grumble 'whatever'.

The sneaky paladin or barbarian: with their low sneak unlikely to beat the direct roll vs the DC. The player wonders if they can do or try something and the DM screams them down and says the only way past is by taking the one single only path so just roll, fail and have your character die already. The player complains and the DM just says "martial suck!"

But here is where "balance" becomes complicated. Because that paladin may not be able to sneak past the monster, but a more paladin-y thing to do anyway might be to wake it up and calmly convince it to let him through. Or (and the barbarian can share this approach) scare it off without having to fight it at all. And even if those fail and they have to fight the monster head-on, they have a better chance of winning a head-to-head fight than a sneakier class might anyway. In other words, the player who insists on being a sneaky paladin may not be able to use that skill to solve the problem, but it doesn't mean their class is incapable of solving the problem at all - ergo, it's not a problem with the game system.

(Now of course, the GM could have calibrated that encounter so that stealth is the only option that makes survival possible - but I wouldn't characterize that as a system problem either, rather it would be the GM allowing one and only one solution and making that solution be something their player(s) couldn't build for.

[Man_Over_Game]

What's that got to do with the price of milk?

Being able to communicate or receive information has it's own value. Including in combat and exploration. It already is a 'mechanic'.

Put another way, a player does not decide what the rules on his attack are, or the value of those mechanics. The game does.

The same thing could be said about things like Language, or Persuasion-esc skills, but often don't. The value of those relevant features and actions are often decided by the DM, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it should be given guidance on what those values are by the book.

For example:

Player can choose between Weapon Feat and Social Feat.

Weapon Feat gives +5 damage.

Social Feat gives +3 languages.

All players at the table understand the value of the +5 damage, as it's pretty quantifiable. However, guidance should be provided to allow the +3 languages to be worth roughly the same amount of value as +5 damage.

This could be as simple as "Pay close attention to your players' investments, and cater your gameplay to include all of them", which sounds like common sense to an experienced DM, but it's how well a new DM does it that determines how good the game/book is.

I know that 5e doesn't really cover this (that is, determining the value of non-number-based investments), which means a lot considering it's the biggest TTRPG right now.


I agree with this, but I also think that some of these "bad decisions" are pretty intuitive. For example, wanting to be a sneaky character and choosing to play a Barbarian or Paladin would be a bad decision in most game systems, but it's one that even players unfamiliar with those systems are unlikely to make. Could that likelihood be improved further if the devs included a "DON'T PLAY A PALADIN IF YOU...WANT TO BE SNEAKY" section? Probably, but when you're trying to cram as much useful information into your rulebook as possible, sometimes (re)stating the obvious has to get cut.

Concerning your "aspects of play" - I'm only familiar with the first three pillars, are you drawing from a list somewhere?



Maybe it's because my coffee hasn't been absorbed yet but I'm not sure I'm parsing this one correctly. In the example I gave (a wizard and a rogue overcoming locked doors), neither character is using "roleplaying" to solve the problem, it's all mechanical.



I think a good synonym for "choice" in this context is "sphere" so I'll use them interchangeably here.

1) The issue I have with #1 is that it breaks down when the choice doesn't plausibly have equal weight to every problem. Your example of Beast Mastery does, because it's a sphere that can include varied concepts/approaches like summoning and control of animals, which are pretty intuitively toolbox sorts of powers that can easily have utility and combat applications. But something like, say, Fire is more limited in application. You could solve that by broadening "Fire" to "Energy" and say it lets you talk to elementals and boosts skills like acrobatics and athletics by charging your limbs with energy or something, but now you've actually passed Beast Mastery because Energy can do most of what it can do but also plausibly cover things like blasting, battlefield control, and teleportation/rapid movement. Striking that balance of plausibility is the hardest part of this for me.

You can get around that by having generic pools to choose from for when a concept doesn't have a matching social/combat mechanic that fits.

For example, someone can pick between Phalanx Mastery or Beast Mastery.

Phalanx Mastery has some cool mechanics involving swapping between using a shield or a spear. However, for the non-combat side of things, it has you pick from the list of Veteran skills, which include things like being able to recognize military tactics, weaknesses and origins, or like having extreme levels of awareness that allow you to hear an incoming ambush, an invisible predator, or a secret conversation in a hidden room.

In your example of Fire, it could have you pick an Arcana skill, which includes things like detecting magic (even inactive magic in casters), being able to speak to creatures of magical origin, or being able to send out their Astral Projection to scout about.

In the opposite direction, someone might choose a specialization that allows them to infuse psionic power in their words to manipulate others into obeying them, which is a non-combat power (forced to be so due to various non-aggression clauses in the effect), but it allows you to pick from various Manipulator combat feats to compensate, which includes things like commanding an ally to strike an enemy adjacent to you, revealing (causing) a weakness in an enemy's defense against certain conditions, or distracting an enemy so that their attack either misses or opens up room for a counterattack if they were already going to miss.


So the formula would basically be:

Unique Combat Feature + Unique Noncombat Feature, whenever possible.
If having two unique features is too restrictive on the narrative or mechanics (such as trying to make Fire a noncombat feature), then swap one of the Unique Features with a Generic Feature of the same type (Combat vs. Noncombat) and one of the General narrative types. Which could just be something like "Veteran", "Arcana", "Expert", "Manipulator", etc.

---------------------------

That isn't saying that everything will be 100% balanced against anything else, but comparing all combat features to all combat features, and all noncombat features to all noncombat features, will help point out any major outliers and inconsistencies that you'd run into by organizing things based on theme rather than function.

For reference, casters in DnD use spell slots, while Martials use attacks, but spell slots don't compare to Attacks very well, which leads into a lot of inconsistencies across multiple versions of DnD. We tried to balance the two by making one side use limited resources while the other uses unlimited resources, but that's just another set of variables that we have no idea how valuable they are or how they compare until after the session is over.

Keep all narratives balanced around the same exact mechanics as the "core", and then develop trends as you specialize. For example, Magic might have more limited resources and burst potential than a Martial, but that should be something you specialize into rather than something automatically decided for you. The default should have a mage be somewhat similar to a martial, with the primary differences being who you can talk to, rather than how.

[Xervous]

The existence of predefined standards such as forbiddance does not inherently mandate that no other means of magical protection exist. If I were to encounter such a nonstandard barrier with the system having a solid foundation I would catch on pretty quick to this situation being different, exceptional, worthy of note... While it is indeed a feat of pulling something out of the GM’s donkey the standards set by the system let the players filter out the standard concepts into their appropriate response bins without extended exposition and handholding.

Wander to the other end with few standards and no preexisting knowledge of the GM or the campaign. Towards the deep end you find Calvinball (far too many exceptions such that there is no norm) and all manner of bad GM stories that might be coloring opinions. But even in the moderate cases you have players who are much more dependent on the GM for everything. With no assumed standards you have what the GM gives you, which in the absence of at least a moderate primer, means your character stumbles about ignorant of how the world works, deprived of typical knowledge that would drive common sense decisions or otherwise color role playing choices and motivations. At least until five sessions in a tidbit drifts up that invalidates your whole character concept either mechanically or by a swift, brutal stroke of lore. Overall has the chance to decrease player engagement when not enough of the world appears consistent or is otherwise presented with a reference point of normality.

An agreed upon system provides the group the means to offload some of the teaching and information delivery burden from the GM. Some GMs like to ramble on for the better part of the session painting grandiose scenes of elegant parades featuring a diverse cast of NPCs. That’s not quite the game for me. As a GM I understand that my group is here to engage with the combat minigame, the lore, the NPCs, and each other as they further their characters based on the colorful motivations that brought the cast together. Standardized rules and examples are less time I have to spend explaining minutiae and more time I can just say X and the majority of players can go ‘ahh, gotcha’ before launching into a thirty minute RP debate instead of that time getting chewed up by a series of questions that read off like ‘water is wet’ factoids. This is also while clarifying unrelated tangents because someone missed X detail and thought there was a glaring lore inconsistency addressed by a commonly known (in setting) detail whose write up fits on a postage stamp.

[Tanarii]

Put another way, a player does not decide what the rules on his attack are, or the value of those mechanics. The game does.

The same thing could be said about things like Language, or Persuasion-esc skills, but often don't. The value of those relevant features and actions are often decided by the DM, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it should be given guidance on what those values are by the book.

For example:

Player can choose between Weapon Feat and Social Feat.

Weapon Feat gives +5 damage.

Social Feat gives +3 languages.

All players at the table understand the value of the +5 damage, as it's pretty quantifiable. However, guidance should be provided to allow the +3 languages to be worth roughly the same amount of value as +5 damage.

This could be as simple as "Pay close attention to your players' investments, and cater your gameplay to include all of them", which sounds like common sense to an experienced DM, but it's how well a new DM does it that determines how good the game/book is.

I know that 5e doesn't really cover this (that is, determining the value of non-number-based investments), which means a lot considering it's the biggest TTRPG right now.
That's because the value is not easily quantifiable. It all depends on how skillfully it is used, and there are an incredible number of ways it can be used.

Of course, I suppose that's true for damage as well, and we mostly accept X way to resolve an attack for N total damage and you're down and dying (or whatever) as an abstract and often insanely oversimplified mechanic. I mean, they could always go down the exalted route and allow verbal "attacks". Or mutant zero/forbidden lands, where you demand something and make a roll, and if you succeed they either name their price in return or attack you. Or bluff/feint maneuvers. Or have a "solve ancient languages puzzle" TN to roll against.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's because the value is not easily quantifiable. It all depends on how skillfully it is used, and there are an incredible number of ways it can be used.

Sure, but if the developers can't do that, then they shouldn't expect their fanbase to figure it out instead. And if nobody can figure it out, then don't have a system where you can compare numbers to non-numbers.

Don't have an instance where you have to choose between better talking or better damage.

Everyone gets a damage feature, everyone gets a talking feature. Now I can compare my apple with your apple, and my orange with your orange, rather than trying to figure out how many of my apples is worth your orange.

[NigelWalmsley]

An agreed baseline must exist for system features and choices to be compared. In absence of such a concrete foundation (the given descriptions of 2e and company have such absences) there quite literally is a void of content capable of being assessed for balance in that given section of the system. If various 2e and AD&D resolution mechanics boil down to ‘ask your GM’ that is in no way balanced or unbalanced, it’s simply fiat.

Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with "make some stuff up" per se. But it's not a feature or an argument for any particular system. In a real sense, it's an argument against a system. If I have to make up an answer when a player asks me a question, that means the rules I'm using don't cover the things I want them to cover (before anyone asks: no, that doesn't make them worthless, it just makes them flawed).


The published game written by other will never have perfect rules for you. But you can take their base ideas and make a perfect game for you.

Actually, you can't do that either, because the time you spend designing a set of rules is time you don't spend on other stuff, and it means your gaming experience isn't portable. I would much rather have a set of rules that is 80% of what I want that I can buy and use than one that is 100% of what I want that I have to write myself. That's why I, and so many others, buy TTRPGs rather than homebrewing everything.


I want the players doing the amazing game of wonder; "Ok, the bad guys place might be protected by anything, so we will just have to use our wilts and plan an attack"

You understand that's nonsense, right? You can't plan for "anything". If anything can happen, your choices are meaningless. If the enemy has specific, defined defenses that you can understand and engage with, you can make a plan to defeat them. If the enemy has "anything", all you can do is declare actions without any ability to understand if those actions are smart or not. You can't roleplay, you can't plan, you can't do anything. What you are asking for is that we take the rules that allow us to craft interesting stories and replace them with "guess hat number I'm thinking of".


The existence of predefined standards such as forbiddance does not inherently mandate that no other means of magical protection exist.

Also, nothing stops the rest of the game from defining other stuff.


But even in the moderate cases you have players who are much more dependent on the GM for everything. With no assumed standards you have what the GM gives you, which in the absence of at least a moderate primer, means your character stumbles about ignorant of how the world works, deprived of typical knowledge that would drive common sense decisions or otherwise color role playing choices and motivations.

Exactly. This is the thing I think people don't get. Making stuff up doesn't allow more creativity, it allows less. If you make something up, it doesn't have any defined interactions, and it doesn't relate to anything. There's no ability for a player to say "hey, the guard skulls are undead, I can use Hide From Undead to sneak past them" or "hey, the cliffs are rough enough that I can expect to climb them, I bet I can sneak in that way". Instead, you're stuck asking questions until you figure out what solution (or solutions) your DM thought of. The value of rules is that they allow you to abstract problems and solutions.

Now, rules light games do exist. And they can be fun. But the key thing that makes them different from this style of DMing is that they invest authorial power in the PCs. They give you resources and mechanics that allow you to say "tactic X is a solution to problem Y". That means you're no longer stuck relying on the DM's idea of what the solution should be, and can actually be creative. But you will note that's not what Zarragon is asking for, because he's very explicit about the idea that only the DM should be making decisions.


Some GMs like to ramble on for the better part of the session painting grandiose scenes of elegant parades featuring a diverse cast of NPCs.

One of the hard things about DMing is understanding when you are doing things for the players versus when you are doing things for yourself. The classic example of this is a setting history that starts with "a hundred thousand years ago" when you're running people through a reskinned Sunless Citadel. Setting detail is going, but it needs to be presented in a way that is relevant to the PCs.


Standardized rules and examples are less time I have to spend explaining minutiae and more time I can just say X and the majority of players can go ‘ahh, gotcha’ before launching into a thirty minute RP debate instead of that time getting chewed up by a series of questions that read off like ‘water is wet’ factoids.

I just want to emphasize this. The rules are not the interesting part of the game. They're not even the interesting mechanical part of the game. Which is why the ranting about "perfect rules" is missing the point. I don't need the rules to be perfect, I need them to be good enough that I'm not pulled out of the experience by dumb nonsense.

[Pex]

I think I did I just didn't realize what you were saying. So by "worse off elsewhere" you mean something outside of the subsystem?

Yes. Where the subsystem only exists for the purpose of fueling the use of an ability, place the limitations there. Don't use vital statistics of a character as a means of paying for the use of the ability.

That's speaking generically and can be vague. For example, 5E paladins casts spells using spell slots. However, their smites, which are a separate thing, are paid for using spell slots. Is that punishment? I can say I'm not thrilled with that cost and have expressed so 6 years ago when I was about to play a 5E paladin for the first time. I know it's 6 years because that's when the campaign I'm playing the paladin started, though we're in a Virus Apocalypse break. I'm still not happy about the cost, but is it "punishment"? I say no because the paladin is not closer to death for smiting. He doesn't lose hit points. He's not more vulnerable to attacks, magic, or other dangers. He doesn't suffer a penalty to do other things nor lose the ability to do anything since he's not losing* turns or actions.

"Vital" is what's key. It's a punishment when the cost to do something brings the character closer to death (loss of hit points, vulnerability) or discourages the player from playing the game (minus numbers to things unrelated to the ability or can't do anything). As I conceded, there can be degrees. A hypothetical -1 to dexterity checks for a round is a punishment, but it's not discouraging as -5 to dexterity checks or disadvantage to all ability checks.

*There's a difference between spending an action to do something and losing an action. Spending an action is the resource allocation. In 5E you spend an Action to cast a spell. Rogues can spend a Bonus Action to hide. Losing an action is an action being taken away from you. You are forbidden to use it. It didn't pay for anything to be used. It's just gone. For example, in 5E if the spellcaster loses concentration on Haste the target loses a turn. That's punishment. I hate 5E Haste.

[KineticDiplomat]

So, regarding “resources versus punishment”

1. There is currently a clear and obvious caster/martial imbalance in many systems, including D&D.

2. Those systems are already attempting to use resource constraints to balance.

3. Self evidently, resource constraints in those systems are insufficient to actually balance casters and martial.

4. The systems stated so far that approach balance tend to have “punishments” as people are calling them or severe limitations.

5. If resource constraints clearly don’t balance - and by D&Ds glaring issue that’s a given - and “punishments” and constraints do, then when you argue for resource constrained balance, you are really arguing for no balance. Just leave casters OP.

[Zarrgon]

Actually, you can't do that either, because the time you spend designing a set of rules is time you don't spend on other stuff, and it means your gaming experience isn't portable. I would much rather have a set of rules that is 80% of what I want that I can buy and use than one that is 100% of what I want that I have to write myself. That's why I, and so many others, buy TTRPGs rather than homebrewing everything.

You can do it, it is easy: just set aside some time and don't do "other stuff". You and some others do just pick up a book and are fine to go and play the game. Many of the rest of us don't do that: we make are own stuff to add to the game. There is even a whole subfourm here for it called: Homebrew.




You understand that's nonsense, right? You can't plan for "anything". If anything can happen, your choices are meaningless. If the enemy has specific, defined defenses that you can understand and engage with, you can make a plan to defeat them. If the enemy has "anything", all you can do is declare actions without any ability to understand if those actions are smart or not. You can't roleplay, you can't plan, you can't do anything. What you are asking for is that we take the rules that allow us to craft interesting stories and replace them with "guess hat number I'm thinking of".

It's not nonsense, your just not the type of person who gets it, but the rest of us call this "real life simulation". You just like the simple game: the enemy has Defense x5 and Defense X8, so then you will use Attack x5 and Defense x8. It's what you see in a lot of video games: to kill the ice giant you must use the fire sword: the end.

The real life simulation is a lot of a guessing game for both sides......but you do get that that is fun for many people.



Exactly. This is the thing I think people don't get. Making stuff up doesn't allow more creativity, it allows less. If you make something up, it doesn't have any defined interactions, and it doesn't relate to anything. There's no ability for a player to say "hey, the guard skulls are undead, I can use Hide From Undead to sneak past them" or "hey, the cliffs are rough enough that I can expect to climb them, I bet I can sneak in that way". Instead, you're stuck asking questions until you figure out what solution (or solutions) your DM thought of. The value of rules is that they allow you to abstract problems and solutions.

I'm not sure why you automatically say that any and all created content has "defined interactions" and does not "relate to anything". Is this true for officially published books too? Or do you give them a free pass: anything published by Them is right and good, but anything made by anyone else is bad and wrong.



But you will note that's not what Zarragon is asking for, because he's very explicit about the idea that only the DM should be making decisions.

Doubt I typed that.....




One of the hard things about DMing is understanding when you are doing things for the players versus when you are doing things for yourself. The classic example of this is a setting history that starts with "a hundred thousand years ago" when you're running people through a reskinned Sunless Citadel. Setting detail is going, but it needs to be presented in a way that is relevant to the PCs.

Your classic example sure makes no sense: A DM can't make a history for a campaign? I guess your fine with "oh the humans live over there and the elves live over there and the orcs are down there" types of campaign details....but a lot of people want a lot more then that.




I just want to emphasize this. The rules are not the interesting part of the game. They're not even the interesting mechanical part of the game. Which is why the ranting about "perfect rules" is missing the point. I don't need the rules to be perfect, I need them to be good enough that I'm not pulled out of the experience by dumb nonsense.

Well, to each his own, as what you call "dumb nonsense" is the greatest part of the game to many people.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

3. Self evidently, resource constraints in those systems are insufficient to actually balance casters and martial.

The key point in your syllogism is that resource constraints in those systems don't reduce the disparity, but that doesn't mean other resource constraints couldn't, either on the caster side or the martial side. You just have to think bigger than most existing suggestions do.

On the caster side, one can imagine hypothetical (and hyperbolic) classes like, say, a "True Vancian Wizard" class that can memorize a grand total of 4-6 spells at a time even at 20th level and has to learn all spells from found scrolls and spellbooks without gaining any at level-up, or a "True Specialist Wizard" class that can only learn spells from a single school (which cannot be Conjuration or Transmutation). In either of those cases, the wizard is using the same resource system but is vastly more constrained than the standard D&D wizard, and the 1e Magic-User (for the former) and the 3e Warmage (for the latter) show that the wizard and fighter are much closer together in power level in those conditions.

On the martial side, you'll notice that ToB classes are closer to casters despite the fact they have added resource restrictions relative to most martial classes, because by adding restrictions to maneuvers (they're a class-limited resource and not something any class can use, and a usage-limited resource via the ready/refresh system) they're allowed to be more powerful than feats, which are usable every round all day every day and are balanced as such.

So you can totally balance caster types and martial types using only resource constraints without any sort of punishment mechanics as long as you get rid of axioms like "fighters must not have a resource system" or "a single wizard must be able to cast spells from most schools" or the like; the problem is that the fighter side generally refuses to let go of the Guy At The Gym Fallacy and so any attempts to move both sets of classes toward a happy medium ends with things much closer to the current fighter than to the current wizard, and that just makes everyone lose.

[Pex]

The key point in your syllogism is that resource constraints in those systems don't reduce the disparity, but that doesn't mean other resource constraints couldn't, either on the caster side or the martial side. You just have to think bigger than most existing suggestions do.

On the caster side, one can imagine hypothetical (and hyperbolic) classes like, say, a "True Vancian Wizard" class that can memorize a grand total of 4-6 spells at a time even at 20th level and has to learn all spells from found scrolls and spellbooks without gaining any at level-up, or a "True Specialist Wizard" class that can only learn spells from a single school (which cannot be Conjuration or Transmutation). In either of those cases, the wizard is using the same resource system but is vastly more constrained than the standard D&D wizard, and the 1e Magic-User (for the former) and the 3e Warmage (for the latter) show that the wizard and fighter are much closer together in power level in those conditions.

On the martial side, you'll notice that ToB classes are closer to casters despite the fact they have added resource restrictions relative to most martial classes, because by adding restrictions to maneuvers (they're a class-limited resource and not something any class can use, and a usage-limited resource via the ready/refresh system) they're allowed to be more powerful than feats, which are usable every round all day every day and are balanced as such.

So you can totally balance caster types and martial types using only resource constraints without any sort of punishment mechanics as long as you get rid of axioms like "fighters must not have a resource system" or "a single wizard must be able to cast spells from most schools" or the like; the problem is that the fighter side generally refuses to let go of the Guy At The Gym Fallacy and so any attempts to move both sets of classes toward a happy medium ends with things much closer to the current fighter than to the current wizard, and that just makes everyone lose.

I agree with this assessment.

[Psyren]

I agree that resources are a useful balancing lever, even if D&D hasn't been great at using them that way (at least, not until 5e.) Limited ammunition on its own isn't enough to materially reduce the gap between casters and martials, but it's a start.

@MOG: I'm already starting to see the cracks appear in your example. I can clearly see the tie between Phalanx Mastery and military tactics, or spotting an ambush. But eavesdropping on a remote conversation doesn't have anything to do with a "phalanx" for me. And the more outlandish the ability the worse the cracks become; do they have to be inside of or adjacent to the hidden room? What if it's across the hall? Down one floor? Down three? In the building next door? One city over? Anywhere on the same plane? Magic can plausibly solve for all of those, but trying to explain to someone how a non-magic "phalanx" sphere does the same thing feels arbitrary and silly.

[BlacKnight]

The key point in your syllogism is that resource constraints in those systems don't reduce the disparity, but that doesn't mean other resource constraints couldn't, either on the caster side or the martial side. You just have to think bigger than most existing suggestions do.

On the caster side, one can imagine hypothetical (and hyperbolic) classes like, say, a "True Vancian Wizard" class that can memorize a grand total of 4-6 spells at a time even at 20th level and has to learn all spells from found scrolls and spellbooks without gaining any at level-up, or a "True Specialist Wizard" class that can only learn spells from a single school (which cannot be Conjuration or Transmutation). In either of those cases, the wizard is using the same resource system but is vastly more constrained than the standard D&D wizard, and the 1e Magic-User (for the former) and the 3e Warmage (for the latter) show that the wizard and fighter are much closer together in power level in those conditions.

The 1e Magic User can memorize douzens of spells at level 20 and can learn them by gaining levels. It isn't balanced at all with the fighter.

Specialized casters can work, but generalist ones are way harder to balance.
You hypothetical wizard with only 6 spells could work in a dungeon-crawling session with no preparation, but in a sandbox campaign where the PCs do what they want when they want... not really.
And even in the dungeon-crawling session it would be like building a specialized wizard.

To balance a generalist wizard, while keeping the generalist part, there are two ways: reduce the power of spells or increase the price of spells.
Reducing the number of spells just makes it a specialist wizard, or doesn't work if preparation is possible.


On the martial side, you'll notice that ToB classes are closer to casters despite the fact they have added resource restrictions relative to most martial classes, because by adding restrictions to maneuvers (they're a class-limited resource and not something any class can use, and a usage-limited resource via the ready/refresh system) they're allowed to be more powerful than feats, which are usable every round all day every day and are balanced as such.

So you can totally balance caster types and martial types using only resource constraints without any sort of punishment mechanics as long as you get rid of axioms like "fighters must not have a resource system" or "a single wizard must be able to cast spells from most schools" or the like; the problem is that the fighter side generally refuses to let go of the Guy At The Gym Fallacy and so any attempts to move both sets of classes toward a happy medium ends with things much closer to the current fighter than to the current wizard, and that just makes everyone lose.

ToB classes aren't on the level of full casters anyway, because they lack the variety of tools the latter have.
You can make other classes that are on the same level, but then they would just be copies of each other, because the Tier 1 classes can do basically everything so there's no niche left to be filled.
Honestly in a D&D framework it would be better to just scrap the full casters and replace them with specialists.
Generalists go against the overall design of having a team of adventurers, each with its role, and are either too weak (bard) or too powerful (wizard).

[Willie the Duck]

So you can totally balance caster types and martial types using only resource constraints without any sort of punishment mechanics as long as you get rid of axioms like "fighters must not have a resource system" or "a single wizard must be able to cast spells from most schools" or the like; the problem is that the fighter side generally refuses to let go of the Guy At The Gym Fallacy and so any attempts to move both sets of classes toward a happy medium ends with things much closer to the current fighter than to the current wizard, and that just makes everyone lose.

I don't think there is a 'side' which is more to blame than the other. People* want to have fighters that are fairly straightforward to use and fits to some mental idea of 'realistic.' Other or the same people also want magic users which have a wide selection of spells which have generally world-changing (or at least party-specific world changing) consequences. They also want the two to be balanced. And, yes, as a general rule, they are aware of the contradictory nature of those impulses.
*Some people, significant enough to shape whether a given edition is a success or not.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't think there is a 'side' which is more to blame than the other. People* want to have fighters that are fairly straightforward to use and fits to some mental idea of 'realistic.' Other or the same people also want magic users which have a wide selection of spells which have generally world-changing (or at least party-specific world changing) consequences. They also want the two to be balanced. And, yes, as a general rule, they are aware of the contradictory nature of those impulses.
*Some people, significant enough to shape whether a given edition is a success or not.

And that contradiction is where a lot of these discussions fall apart, in my experience -- there are those who find that contradiction a "world breaker", and those who express outright scathing disdain for that reaction.

[Tanarii]

The 1e Magic User can memorize douzens of spells at level 20 and can learn them by gaining levels. It isn't balanced at all with the fighter.
A 1e Wizard at level 20 either spent 4-5 years getting there, or didn't play with the built in XP rules. It's not really a relevant point of comparison. What matters is levels 1-10.

Now in 3e or later, high level play is a point of comparison. Not a great one, but you still might get there in a year of play or even faster. But that's exactly part of the problem. Spells originally built for "never going to get there" levels of play are now part of the assumed and reachable level span. Even if they're not the normal range of play, they're not effectively out of reach.

[BlacKnight]

A 1e Wizard at level 20 either spent 4-5 years getting there, or didn't play with the built in XP rules. It's not really a relevant point of comparison. What matters is levels 1-10.

Now in 3e or later, high level play is a point of comparison. Not a great one, but you still might get there in a year of play or even faster. But that's exactly part of the problem. Spells originally built for "never going to get there" levels of play are now part of the assumed and reachable level span. Even if they're not the normal range of play, they're not effectively out of reach.

There's no obligation to start at lv 1, and for high level games the assumption is obviously to give each character the same amount of exp.
So if the wizard is lv 20 the other classes would be of even higher level, but let's not kid ourselves that it makes them balanced.

Every option available to the characters in the books is something that should be considered, "it only matters in 1% of the cases" is not a valid defense.
I would also notice that there's no line in the books that say something like "these spells are not meant to be used by players". Which would also beg the question of why the spells are in the players handbooks to start with.

Also, if Companion and Immortal Sets were not meant to be used... would that make those books a fraud? After all TSR would be selling unusable content (yes, I know that those books also have optional content for lower levels, but it's only a part).

[Zarrgon]

Every option available to the characters in the books is something that should be considered, "it only matters in 1% of the cases" is not a valid defense.
I would also notice that there's no line in the books that say something like "these spells are not meant to be used by players". Which would also beg the question of why the spells are in the players handbooks to start with.

Before 3E there was no problematic game rule that said: All spellcasters immediately know all spells in the game. At best, a PC wizard could only create the 'common' spells. Any exotic spell had to be found in gameplay.

Just look at the Spell Compendium. Flip through it and you will find a lot of spells with unique and/or powerful effects. A vast number of those spells come from the 2E Forgotten Realms. But while in 3E all spells are free for anyone to take, in 2E the bulk of those spells were not available to every spellcaster character. The vast majority were only found in one special spellbook that the character could find as treasure.

2E also had at least two rule systems for how rare a spell was. Instead of the 3E where everyone automatically knows every spell, 2E spellcasters only had a chance to even know of a spell. The system also allowed DMs to mark spells as common, uncommon, rare, very rare or unique. The more unknown the spell was, the more of a chance that a character could not get it.



Also, if Companion and Immortal Sets were not meant to be used... would that make those books a fraud?

You might mean Companion and Master.....but you are also crossing the AD&D and D&D streams

[Telok]

Not to anyone, but an idea. Why not have optional cheracter complexity?

Say that at some series of points during character generation and advancement the player gets a choice to opt in (or opt further in) to a set of more complex and advanced abilities. Make it so that characters all get this choice at the same points, maybe they're a feat every level, maybe you spend xp to buy abilities and each ability costs the same amount at particular tiers, maybe its a choice between a basic class ability a basic subclass abiliy and an advanced subclass ability. Whatever it is the character resource comes at the same point for each character.

You need to balance the simple basic options, but you're keeping them simple like basic number boosts or modest at will abilities. This is where you chuck your extra basic attacks, +2 on a skill roll, at will magic that duplicates those things, etc.

The advanced stuff could be your 'with a roll', 'X times per day/encounter', 'has a side effect', 'uses Y amount of resource Z',etc., types of limits with stronger effects like 'knock down or disarm an enemy', 'do bonus damage', 'fireball', 'auto succeed a skill use', 'jump 40 feet', etc. You can put prerequsites on them, make them chains of abilities, whatever.

The approach to balance then is just to figure out and explicitly communicate that each set of abilities available at a particular level/advancement point is as useful in the overall game as the other abilities available at that same level/point. If you decide that +4 damage in melee iscequal to 1/fight trip is equal to 3/day fireball is equal to 3+ on a d6 auto succeed intimidate when you have 9 fights a day and only use intimidate 2/fight thats fine as long as it's communicated to the players and DMs that you have to hit the number of fights.

If you want different forms of game play like 'combat' vs 'social' then you can balance by simply giving the characters their social and combat abilities at the same advancement points. If you want to keep options balanced then you make new advanced abilities for each type in your splat books. You don't put piles of new spells in each splat without putting new maneuvers and skill tricks in too.

Choose a definition of balance, choose a framework that treats all characters equally, and figure out your equivalencies. It sounds a lot like d&d 4e because it is. In combat, by the numbers and character advancement, they got their definition of balance mostly right. There were other problems with d&d 4e, but the character combat power advancement schedule and abilities were successful at their definition of balance.

[BlacKnight]

Before 3E there was no problematic game rule that said: All spellcasters immediately know all spells in the game. At best, a PC wizard could only create the 'common' spells. Any exotic spell had to be found in gameplay.

Just look at the Spell Compendium. Flip through it and you will find a lot of spells with unique and/or powerful effects. A vast number of those spells come from the 2E Forgotten Realms. But while in 3E all spells are free for anyone to take, in 2E the bulk of those spells were not available to every spellcaster character. The vast majority were only found in one special spellbook that the character could find as treasure.

2E also had at least two rule systems for how rare a spell was. Instead of the 3E where everyone automatically knows every spell, 2E spellcasters only had a chance to even know of a spell. The system also allowed DMs to mark spells as common, uncommon, rare, very rare or unique. The more unknown the spell was, the more of a chance that a character could not get it.



You might mean Companion and Master.....but you are also crossing the AD&D and D&D streams

Yeah, I meant the Master Set, but no, I'm not confusing anything with AD&D. The point was about the first edition of D&D, and in that game wizards learn spells by increasing by level.

[KineticDiplomat]

Syllogisms have their uses in bounded sets (and are they really syllogisms in those circumstances?), namely they help serve as a practical check on pure theory. Usually there's a theoretical failing they help highlight even if the exact nature is unknown. Communism mis-defining value in it's original works due to the influence of earlier economists, for example. A fatal flaw that was only really apparent in the theoretical after the practical highlighted it.

Perhaps there could be a theoretical system where resource constraints worked. It has just consistently failed in all the games we've talked about in this thread so far, which are the common reference points for both game design and play across the wider community. No doubt some issue with utility and the social contract contribute are good candidates as to why it fails in these games, but it may be something else. Somewhat irrelevant. The relevant point is that for every practical attempt to implement resource limitations as the major balancing factor in a TTRPG, or even insufficient punishments (looking at you shadowrun), we've seen it fail.

When we talk about D&D, this is particularly egregious. Arguments to the effect of "we should use these D&D techniques for balance" when D&D is a prime example of hideous imbalance is hardly a good indicator that they should work elsewhere when practically applied.

Which brings us back to the real issue: if people advocate techniques known to consistently fail at balancing, even if they theoretically could succeed, then pragmatically they are arguing to not attempt to balance after all. And they may have reasons they don't want to balance - I'd hazard a guess it has to do with TTRPGS, particularly high magic TTRPGS, having a heavy does of power fantasy - but let's not conflate "I want to be unbalanced because that is fun" with "the classes are balanced, because the same things that let me be OP are being used."

And that does go back the OPs point zero - it is ok to be imbalanced if that's what you want. But let's not pretend that false constraints are actually balancing it while we go and enjoy the fruits of being overpowered.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The 1e Magic User can memorize douzens of spells at level 20 and can learn them by gaining levels. It isn't balanced at all with the fighter.

I didn't say the True Vancian Caster is the 1e Magic-User, just that the fact that the 1e MU was more limited in slots, preparation time, and spell acquisition than the 3e Wizard and was closer to its edition's fighter shows that those sorts of things narrow the gap, in the same way that the 3e Warmage isn't actually a single-school True Evocation Specialist Wizard but its drastically limited school action closes the gap between it and the fighter as well.


ToB classes aren't on the level of full casters anyway, because they lack the variety of tools the latter have.

Again, I didn't say they were, just that they were closer. The point is that Kinetic Diplomat said that resource constraints can't work to balance anything because they haven't in the past, and I said that they can work by showing examples of places where small constraints have made classes a bit more balanced and hypothetical massive constraints could make classes that are much more balanced.


You can make other classes that are on the same level, but then they would just be copies of each other, because the Tier 1 classes can do basically everything so there's no niche left to be filled.

This is an oft-repeated pithy statement, but doesn't really hold when you look at what the classes can actually do. Clerics, druids, wizards, and erudites can all do "summoning" and "area blasting" and "defensive self-buffing" and so on, but the way they do each of those things is quite different--for instance, clerics have costly but willing long-term summons with planar ally, and can get access to short-term utility-focused summons with summon monster; wizards have cheap but coerced long-term summons with planar binding and always have access to short-term utility-focused summons with summon monster, druids only have access to short-term combat-focused summons with summon nature's ally, but have the best feat and spell support for those summons, erudites only have access to short-term combat-focused summons with astral construct and a handful of CPsi powers, but astral constructs are customizable and avoid various anti-summoning wards.

And "basically everything" isn't "actually everything." Druids can't do undead animation, but are generally the best at personal shapeshifting via Wild Shape; wizards can't do healing or resurrection, but are generally the best at "world-changing effects" via a wide variety of permanent/instantaneous Abjurations and Transmutations; clerics can't really do illusions (yes, they have a dozen or so Illusions on their list, but none you care about), but are generally the best at metamagic via Divine Metamagic; erudites can't really do non-personal buffs, but are generally the best at temporal/action shenanigans via time hop/schism/etc.

So really, there's room for at least a few more Tier 1s before you've totally exhausted the design space; heck, a Sorcerer with boosted spell access and a Spirit Shaman with boosted class features almost qualify already, and despite being superficially just "wizard lite" and "druid lite" classes they have their own distinct themes (magical heritage, spirit creatures) to differentiate them from the pack.


I don't think there is a 'side' which is more to blame than the other. People* want to have fighters that are fairly straightforward to use and fits to some mental idea of 'realistic.' Other or the same people also want magic users which have a wide selection of spells which have generally world-changing (or at least party-specific world changing) consequences. They also want the two to be balanced. And, yes, as a general rule, they are aware of the contradictory nature of those impulses.
*Some people, significant enough to shape whether a given edition is a success or not.

I characterize them as a "side" because of all the various arguments for wizards being broken, wizards being balanced, fighters being broken, fighters being balanced, or some position somewhere in the middle, the "keep your magic away from my fighter"/"that's totally unrealistic" faction is the most coherent one and that one that generally comes out of the woodwork to complain in any "how to make the fighter not suck" discussion. There are certainly other arguments on that front, and wizard fanatics who are just as bad, but you don't see e.g. Shrodinger's Wizard Fallacy people swoop into fixed-list caster design threads to complain that an Oracle or Pyromancer class isn't broad enough to "feel magical." :smallamused:


Not to anyone, but an idea. Why not have optional cheracter complexity?

[...]

Choose a definition of balance, choose a framework that treats all characters equally, and figure out your equivalencies. It sounds a lot like d&d 4e because it is. In combat, by the numbers and character advancement, they got their definition of balance mostly right. There were other problems with d&d 4e, but the character combat power advancement schedule and abilities were successful at their definition of balance.

The problem is that those sorts of "equivalences" are easy to do in combat (though not without risking overcorrection and blandifying combat, for which I also cite 4e), but difficult out of combat and difficult both in and out of combat when you take synergies into account, and that's where all the balance problems lie.

Balancing fighters and wizards is utterly trivial if you approach it as a clean room problem where a party including one wizard and one fighter takes part in between [X] and [X+Y] combat encounters per [time period] on a N-by-N-square grid on a featureless plain, but the moment you allow any remotely-interesting combat abilities (e.g. summoned minions, flight), non-combat abilities that can be used as combat abilities (e.g. stone shaping, illusory voices), combat abilities that can be applied before combat and extend into combat (e.g. weapon buffs, damaging auras), then it quickly becomes intractable to try to balance all of those things in any reasonable way. And when you consider that a party can be all fighters, or all wizards, or no fighters or wizards so that basic balancing ideas like "there's a front line/back line distinction to make tanking work" or "someone in the party is going to be able to inflict physical damage" go out the window, it gets even worse.

The one way I can see a "sliding scale of complexity" working is to have multiple classes for each combat that differ in options and complexity but can all contribute the same amount. You could have Wizard and Warblade on the more complex end, Warlock and Barbarian on the more simple end, and Sorcerer/Warmage/Marshal/Fighter somewhere in the middle, but balance them so that a newbie's Barbarian and an expert's Warblade contribute similarly without requiring dumpster-diving on the Barbarian's part or removing interesting abilities on the Warblade's part. Problem is, that only really exists in a 1e-like environment where you pick a class and stick with it, not one where you can go Barbarian X/Warblade Y to get the best of both worlds, and that lack of customization is a dealbreaker for many.


Perhaps there could be a theoretical system where resource constraints worked. It has just consistently failed in all the games we've talked about in this thread so far, which are the common reference points for both game design and play across the wider community. No doubt some issue with utility and the social contract contribute are good candidates as to why it fails in these games, but it may be something else. Somewhat irrelevant. The relevant point is that for every practical attempt to implement resource limitations as the major balancing factor in a TTRPG, or even insufficient punishments (looking at you shadowrun), we've seen it fail.

When we talk about D&D, this is particularly egregious. Arguments to the effect of "we should use these D&D techniques for balance" when D&D is a prime example of hideous imbalance is hardly a good indicator that they should work elsewhere when practically applied.

Which brings us back to the real issue: if people advocate techniques known to consistently fail at balancing, even if they theoretically could succeed, then pragmatically they are arguing to not attempt to balance after all. And they may have reasons they don't want to balance - I'd hazard a guess it has to do with TTRPGS, particularly high magic TTRPGS, having a heavy does of power fantasy - but let's not conflate "I want to be unbalanced because that is fun" with "the classes are balanced, because the same things that let me be OP are being used."

Imagine this thread's title was "My Current Final Answer to the Theurge Problem" and the point of contention that in D&D it's very difficult to build a reasonably balanced character with access to both arcane blasting/control/utility spells and divine healing/buffing/support spells, and you claimed that it obviously isn't possible to ever build such a class because every single prior attempt has been too weak, pointing to the fact that in every single edition of D&D arcane-divine hybrid characters are weaker than their pure-arcane or pure-divine counterparts.

In that scenario, I would point out that of course arcane-divine hybrids are weaker because in every existing edition of D&D it's been a fundamental tenet that arcane casting is its own thing and divine casting is its own thing and you have to pay out the nose if you want access to both, but that doesn't mean you can't make an arcane-divine hybrid class that works by removing that stipulation--the 3e bard is already an arcane caster who heals and buffs like a divine caster and the Divine Magician ACF lets a cleric be a divine caster who can blast or control like an arcane caster, after all--just that it hasn't been done up to this point because that distinction is a sacred cow most D&Ders don't want to get rid of.

Adding resources to the fighter and/or constraining the wizard's resources are the same issue. You can balance beatsticks and casters just fine to within a reasonable tolerance, using the same kinds of balancing mechanisms seen elsewhere in the game, as long as you're willing to make some sacred ground beef.

[Cluedrew]

Not to anyone, but an idea. Why not have optional cheracter complexity?I think the idea good, the implementation would be tricky of course. I have some recollection of someone suggesting this as a use for 5E sub-classes. Some sub-classes would represent almost the exact same concept just in simpler and more complex implementations. Like the simple fighter might be a juggernaut type - move forward and attack - while the complex fighter might be a canny fighter with dozens of tricks that each only help in a situation or two.

Balance becomes an issue is that the strength of a simple class is (closer to) a point, but for a complex class it is more likely to be a range (and likely a broader range than you expect). If you want to get them balanced than the point has to line up with the place in the range most people end up playing.

Still I like the idea, especially in the context of a system that tries to be many things to many people.


Perhaps there could be a theoretical system where resource constraints worked. It has just consistently failed in all the games we've talked about in this thread so far, which are the common reference points for both game design and play across the wider community. No doubt some issue with utility and the social contract contribute are good candidates as to why it fails in these games, but it may be something else.Because they system let the constraint be gamed. There are lots of little examples of this but the classic one would be the 15-minute adventuring day, where resources are refreshed so frequently any limits on them don't really matter. I mean that extreme probably didn't happen that often but it kind of highlights the problem: Optimizing your resources took you away from the tension.

And I just realized that I am heading to a slightly different point about how one should try to make the effective path fun, if you let them drift then people might take the effective path instead of the fun one. I guess my only argument for why resource system might be a good balancing tool is kind of proof by contradiction, no matter how many systems have gotten it wrong than if one has gotten it right than it is possible. Of course any example I could use could be debated and I got to go so maybe I will pick this up later.

[Willie the Duck]

And that contradiction is where a lot of these discussions fall apart, in my experience -- there are those who find that contradiction a "world breaker", and those who express outright scathing disdain for that reaction.

If this is related to the what I will call 'verisimilitude' epic threads that you were involved in, I don't know, roughly two years ago, I assure you I have no desire to go back and relitigate those.


I characterize them as a "side" because of all the various arguments for wizards being broken, wizards being balanced, fighters being broken, fighters being balanced, or some position somewhere in the middle, the "keep your magic away from my fighter"/"that's totally unrealistic" faction is the most coherent one and that one that generally comes out of the woodwork to complain in any "how to make the fighter not suck" discussion. There are certainly other arguments on that front, and wizard fanatics who are just as bad, but you don't see e.g. Shrodinger's Wizard Fallacy people swoop into fixed-list caster design threads to complain that an Oracle or Pyromancer class isn't broad enough to "feel magical." :smallamused:

There are definitely arguments that one does and doesn't tend to see pop up. People seeking to create more limited casters are generally seen as doing something self-specific, whereas complex fighter 'fixes' are often seen as 'fixing it wrong.' I just generally disagree with the notion of sides. People have desires, often conflicting, and they voice them. I think the "how to make the fighter not suck" discussions are different from "Oracle or Pyromancer" discussions in that the former are seen as solving a problem* by making a change one might not agree with, while the later seems more like an optional sub-thought to explore.
*the fact that these fixes clearly aren't making it into the official game rules, so who cares if someone else makes a change one disagrees with being somewhat amusing, but par for the course with online discussion.



I think the idea good, the implementation would be tricky of course. I have some recollection of someone suggesting this as a use for 5E sub-classes. Some sub-classes would represent almost the exact same concept just in simpler and more complex implementations. Like the simple fighter might be a juggernaut type - move forward and attack - while the complex fighter might be a canny fighter with dozens of tricks that each only help in a situation or two.

Balance becomes an issue is that the strength of a simple class is (closer to) a point, but for a complex class it is more likely to be a range (and likely a broader range than you expect). If you want to get them balanced than the point has to line up with the place in the range most people end up playing.

The complex classes are always going to be a situation where you try to balance based on some average of the range, based on certain assumptions about the playstyle in which they are used. There are so many other factors to consider, that any complex class is going to run at a different level of ability based on how each campaign plays.


Still I like the idea, especially in the context of a system that tries to be many things to many people.

I think that's the most that can be hoped for, given what D&D means to the gamer base -- if it can be given the option of balance (relative, depending, etc.), if that is something that people consider a high priority.

[Democratus]

I doubt that there is even a single definition of "balance" being used here. Everyone has their own idea of what balance means and what it would look like in a game.

Without having agreement on the concept - how can there ever be consensus?

[Max_Killjoy]

If this is related to the what I will call 'verisimilitude' epic threads that you were involved in, I don't know, roughly two years ago, I assure you I have no desire to go back and relitigate those.


Yeah, there are a lot of things I've wanted to post in this thread that I just haven't.

But, it's also related to the fact that SOMETHING has to be "given up" when it comes to addressing this issue -- could be balance, some characters' power, some players' conceptions of what certain characters "should" be, coherent setting, or something else.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think the idea good, the implementation would be tricky of course. I have some recollection of someone suggesting this as a use for 5E sub-classes. Some sub-classes would represent almost the exact same concept just in simpler and more complex implementations. Like the simple fighter might be a juggernaut type - move forward and attack - while the complex fighter might be a canny fighter with dozens of tricks that each only help in a situation or two.

Balance becomes an issue is that the strength of a simple class is (closer to) a point, but for a complex class it is more likely to be a range (and likely a broader range than you expect). If you want to get them balanced than the point has to line up with the place in the range most people end up playing.

Still I like the idea, especially in the context of a system that tries to be many things to many people.


To me, it adds yet another variable to an already tricky balance situation. Not only do classes have to be balanced across the entire range of levels -- for any and every level, all the classes need to be balanced -- it also adds a complexity axis where the simplest and most complex subclasses all have to be balanced at any and every level.

(Again, going with the thread premise that "balance" is not the thing one decides to give up.)

[Telok]

To me, it adds yet another variable to an already tricky balance situation. Not only do classes have to be balanced across the entire range of levels -- for any and every level, all the classes need to be balanced -- it also adds a complexity axis where the simplest and most complex subclasses all have to be balanced at any and every level.

(Again, going with the thread premise that "balance" is not the thing one decides to give up.)

I'd perceive it more as a method of breaking down the function of balancing into discrete workable chunks. The trick being that all characters would get a build resource at the same time. That of course isn't true in d&d 3e & 5e.

Sort of like saying all classes get one combat thing and one social thing at 5th level. Then you can come to an agreement on the warrior simple options for those being on par with the warrior complex options. Then do the same for the mage options. Then check balance on the warrior vs mage simple options and the warrior vs mage complex options. Eventually you decide level 5 is balanced enough, made easier because you're not trying to compare warrion simple combat options to mage complex social options and both classes got both combat and social things.

You would still want to check cross-level synergy and combos, but hopefully they'll be easier to compare by using the same character building structure and everyone will have some. Synergies and combos aren't a bad thing, they just become a problem when they're too good.

[Pex]

I think the idea good, the implementation would be tricky of course. I have some recollection of someone suggesting this as a use for 5E sub-classes. Some sub-classes would represent almost the exact same concept just in simpler and more complex implementations. Like the simple fighter might be a juggernaut type - move forward and attack - while the complex fighter might be a canny fighter with dozens of tricks that each only help in a situation or two.

Balance becomes an issue is that the strength of a simple class is (closer to) a point, but for a complex class it is more likely to be a range (and likely a broader range than you expect). If you want to get them balanced than the point has to line up with the place in the range most people end up playing.

Still I like the idea, especially in the context of a system that tries to be many things to many people.



For something like this those who want to play the Juggernaught won't mind Canny has his tricks. Juggernaught hits hard and is resilient. They like that, and it is effective. Canny gets his fun with mobility or party tactician or exploits. They approach combat differently. The balance problem, if there is a problem, is what they can do out of combat. They need to be able to contribute in a meaningful way in their own way. Juggernaught can be Strong Man. He can be the guy who stands at the bottom next to a very tall wall everyone climbs on top of each other so Great Perception Little guy can look over and see what needs to be seen. Because of Juggernaut no one else needs to make a check to climb or maintain balance. Canny guy gives the party bonuses to traveling or a tactical bonus to before a combat starts such as initiative or avoid ambushes or maybe he's the party's Face. Spellcasters likely can do these things too, but now they don't have to.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I'd perceive it more as a method of breaking down the function of balancing into discrete workable chunks. The trick being that all characters would get a build resource at the same time. That of course isn't true in d&d 3e & 5e.

Sort of like saying all classes get one combat thing and one social thing at 5th level. Then you can come to an agreement on the warrior simple options for those being on par with the warrior complex options. Then do the same for the mage options. Then check balance on the warrior vs mage simple options and the warrior vs mage complex options. Eventually you decide level 5 is balanced enough, made easier because you're not trying to compare warrion simple combat options to mage complex social options and both classes got both combat and social things.

You would still want to check cross-level synergy and combos, but hopefully they'll be easier to compare by using the same character building structure and everyone will have some. Synergies and combos aren't a bad thing, they just become a problem when they're too good.

Keeping class structure strict and uniform doesn't actually help much with balancing "simple" and "complex" options if you're allowing relatively free choice at the breakpoints you choose. To make the simple vs. complex balance concept work you really need to allow less build choice to narrow the possible build space.

For example, comparing the Warmage and the Beguiler (two "fixed" caster classes) at various breakpoints is actually pretty easy because you know exactly what they get at every level in terms of class features and spells with the small exception of Advanced Learning spells, but comparing the Beguiler and the Sorcerer (a "variable" caster class) is incredibly difficult because the range of possible sorcerers is so broad, even though they get the same kinds of choices at the same levels from similar lists of largely-overlapping options, even though you can build a sorcerer to be pretty simple or pretty complex based on your preferences, and even if you're deliberately building a sorcerer to be Beguiler-like with mostly Enchantment/Illusion/BFC spells and not making something out there like, say, a half-summoner half-gish. If you want to ensure that the Sorcerer is balanced with the Warmage or Beguiler, you'd have to limit its spell selection mechanism a heck of a lot to even start doing that.

And comparing two similar caster classes in that way is kind of the best-case scenario. Comparing the Monk and the Marshal or the Barbarian and the Swashbuckler (assuming all of those classes were modified to generally not suck and have both simple and complex builds, of course) is much more difficult given that each of those has a totally different role and basically no overlapping mechanics or resource systems. Now imagine actually giving those classes a simple vs. complex slider, where e.g. the Monk and Unarmed Swordsage are supposed to be the simple and complex versions of the same "unarmored skirmisher" class and you're supposed to be able to build something that's 100% Monk, 100% Swordsage, 50%/50% Monk/Swordsage, or anything in between and have those come out vaguely balanced.

In short, unless classes are narrowed to the point that their options are largely fixed and they're closer in breadth to a single build of a 3e class, I don't think parity between simple and complex builds/classes/characters is really an achievable option.

[Telok]

For example, comparing the Warmage and the Beguiler...

Oh, goodness, no. You absolutely can't do it with any version of d&d from the last 20 years. Well, maybe 4e, but it wasn't giving people different options, just variations on standard combat effects. And probably not any version of d&d at all.

Each d&d class is effectively it's own set of abilities on it's own schedule without a real relation to the other classes. About the best you can do in 3.x is compare cleric domains. I mean, beguiler and warmage look similar, but they're getting different types of character resources from the spell lists and class abilities. You're heading back to "is A's combat orange equal to B's social coffee cup" type questions.

[NigelWalmsley]

If you want to ensure that the Sorcerer is balanced with the Warmage or Beguiler, you'd have to limit its spell selection mechanism a heck of a lot to even start doing that.

No you don't. It's balanced with the Beguiler now. People talk about how balancing different classes is really hard, but if you look at the level of balance that actually exists in 3e, it doesn't actually seem to be. You could fill a PHB with classes that are all A) reasonably balanced and B) use different resource management systems. I'm not really sure how much more you could want in terms of "it is in fact possible to balance classes that are different".

The reason imbalance exists is because games are designed by people who are bad at math and don't face strong pressures to make a balanced product. It's not some mystery we can't solve, it's just that if you can balance a system as complicated as D&D, you can get more money from Google or Amazon than WotC would ever imagine paying you.

[Cluedrew]

You could fill a PHB with classes that are all A) reasonably balanced and B) use different resource management systems. I'm not really sure how much more you could want in terms of "it is in fact possible to balance classes that are different".Do you mean with classes that exist? Because if you do I would really like to see that list. And every other question I have kind of depends on if that list exists or not so I'm going to end here.

[Ignimortis]

Do you mean with classes that exist? Because if you do I would really like to see that list. And every other question I have kind of depends on if that list exists or not so I'm going to end here.

Yes. It's not the best solution, but it might work. Let's see, what do we have in the 3.5 PHB?

Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard. Alright, here goes.

Barbarian, Bard - those are perfectly fine, and Barbarian is a solid option for "lower complexity please" people. Go into a rage, smash people. I never understood why Fighters are often less complex than Barbarians.

Cleric and Paladin get replaced by Healer, Favoured Soul and Crusader. You'd have to beef up Healer's spell-list a bit, but some people do want to play Cleric as a healbot, so that needs to exist.

Druid gets replaced by Wildshape Ranger. Anyone who wants to play a spellcaster type of Druid, gets to play a nature god's Favoured Soul.

Fighter and Monk are now Warblade and Swordsage. People who want to be Monk get an Unarmed Swordsage variant.

Ranger is in a weird spot, because we already have Wildshape Ranger which is generally Ranger but better. Not sure what to do about them, because everything I have is "give them initiating" or "nerf Wildshape Ranger to lose features you actually care about". Perhaps bump up regular Ranger's Animal Companion to their full HD and make the Wildshape variant lose their companion?

Rogue is pretty much fine if you let them take good ACFs. Gestalting them with Fighter as a class might also work.

Sorcerer and Wizard are replaced by Beguiler, Warmage and Dread Necromancer. Needs another one or two classes of that type to finish that off, though - conjuration, transmutation and divination aren't covered by those. Maybe it's for the best, since the former two are the source of most issues with magic, but we do need those archetypes to be covered anyway, in some form.

[NigelWalmsley]

I wasn't necessarily thinking of one-to-one swaps. I don't think that's necessary to prove the point, as I don't think the specific classes in the PHB are essential to the success of the game.


Do you mean with classes that exist? Because if you do I would really like to see that list. And every other question I have kind of depends on if that list exists or not so I'm going to end here.

Just look at the variety of classes that are in the T3/T4 band (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!). T3 alone has twenty, which is enough to discard eight classes for being too similar and still end up with more classes than were in the PHB. And that's from an edition that was notoriously sloppy about balance. If you can get there without trying, I think it's absurd to suggest there's any fundamental problem with having classes that are balanced but mechanically distinct.

[Psyren]

Just look at the variety of classes that are in the T3/T4 band (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!). T3 alone has twenty, which is enough to discard eight classes for being too similar and still end up with more classes than were in the PHB. And that's from an edition that was notoriously sloppy about balance. If you can get there without trying, I think it's absurd to suggest there's any fundamental problem with having classes that are balanced but mechanically distinct.

Even if the community rankings are taken as gospel, there's a lot more variation in that band than you're letting on (any band that includes both Shugenja and Scout, or Wilder and Ninja, has plenty) - and more importantly, it supports rather than disproves the continued existence of caster/martial disparity. The classes with some form of casting are almost universally higher in that band than the classes without, and the classes without innate access to any magic at all like Fighter and Generic Warrior are both lower down and vastly outnumbered. Are the entries on this list better balanced against each other than any ranking that includes druids and samurai, sure - but depending on how much disparity you're trying to get rid of, this list may not be "good enough."

[Cluedrew]

Yeah I have been silent on this because... "Shugenja and Scout": I can guess what the scout is about, because actually scouting works weird in D&D I'm going to assume its more of just a light and fast martial combatant with fewer real scouting abilities. I'm not even entirely sure what language Shugenja comes from let alone what the class actually looks like. So I am going to have to speak in the abstract somewhat.

Sure let's say we start NigelWalmsley's T3/T4 base, use Ignimortis's suggestions to pick and maybe tweak a few of the classes to bring them into a slightly closer band, we are just going to hope its close enough for Psyren's over all balance concern. But even so I am not quite done:

1) This is the Texas Sharpshooter approach to balance*. Create a whole bunch of classes and then pick the balanced ones. Its not a strategy I would recommend for someone actually planning to create more content.

2) Creation strategy aside what can we learn from this? Limited spell lists seem to be the main way of decreasing the power of casters in D&D and martial get powered up by getting more spell like abilities. (Mechanically at least, some of them are flavoured very differently.) Which still seems to be kind of narrow and not quite the 11 different resource systems originally promises. Which I am OK with because that is a lot of rules text.

3) Yes there does seem to be a slant towards more magic = more power even in this band.

* Someone shoots at the side of a barn then draws a target in the middle of the densest grouping of shots. I have no idea what it has to do with Texas.

[NigelWalmsley]

I can guess what the scout is about, because actually scouting works weird in D&D I'm going to assume its more of just a light and fast martial combatant with fewer real scouting abilities. I'm not even entirely sure what language Shugenja comes from let alone what the class actually looks like.

The Scout is basically a nature-themed Rogue. The Shugenja is one of the Oriental Adventures classes that got repackaged in the Completes, it's a caster that gets spells divided by element.


This is the Texas Sharpshooter approach to balance*. Create a whole bunch of classes and then pick the balanced ones. Its not a strategy I would recommend for someone actually planning to create more content.

I wouldn't advocate that as a strategy for creating content, but that's not the point (similarly, it's not a strategy for reducing disparity, so Psyren's complaints about such are entirely beside the point). It's simply an existence proof that balancing classes doesn't require homogenity, and the fact that you can do this well accidentally should suggest that it would be pretty easy to solve the problem if you actually tried. You can write as many classes as have been in any version of the PHB that are reasonably balanced and mechanically distinct, so the notion that balance forces all classes to be the same is simply nonsense.

As far as how you create balanced content, once we've all acknowledged that it's possible, the process is quite simple. It's the same as any other design problem. You define your metrics, then you iteratively refine, test, and redesign until you've hit your target. The idea that this is some unattainable goal, or even particularly hard, is simply FUD.


martial get powered up by getting more spell like abilities.

I think this is misleading, because it suggests that those abilities are inherently magical in some respect, or that we're turning martials into casters. We aren't. It's simply that 3e defined practically every ability worth having as a spell, so any new ability that does interesting things is going to feel like a caster ability, even if it's a martial one by any reasonable standard.


Which still seems to be kind of narrow and not quite the 11 different resource systems originally promises.

Warlock (at-will), Binder (5 round recharge), Wilder (spell points), Totemist (divide points between abilities), Warblade (use abilities or recharge them), Crusader (random ability selection), Swordsage (encounter powers), Healer (prepared slots), Warmage (spontaneous slots), Factotum (spell points, but substantively different from the Wilder in various ways), and Rogue (positioning matters). That's 11.

And, of course, if we look at 4e (the "balance means boring" crowd's favorite talking point), we can cut out whichever three of those seem most similar. Plus that's just confining ourselves to things that have been printed. You could easily imagine classes that had abilities that synergized when used in the right sequence, or inflicted Shadowrun-esque Drain, or any number of other things, and I defy anyone to make a good faith argument that it's impossible to balance those things with existing classes.


Yes there does seem to be a slant towards more magic = more power even in this band.

Sure, but that's not the point. I'm not trying to demonstrate that you can balance magic and martial by doing this, I'm trying to demonstrate that balance doesn't require every class to be identical. If I wanted to prove that you can balance sword guy and spell guy, I'd just point at the Warblade and the Binder or the Crusader and the Warmage or the Swordsage and the Jester or the Scout and the Spellthief. Again, if a game that paid essentially no attention to balance can do that, imagine what you could do if designers actually did their jobs and tested things.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Oh, goodness, no. You absolutely can't do it with any version of d&d from the last 20 years. Well, maybe 4e, but it wasn't giving people different options, just variations on standard combat effects. And probably not any version of d&d at all.

Each d&d class is effectively it's own set of abilities on it's own schedule without a real relation to the other classes. About the best you can do in 3.x is compare cleric domains. I mean, beguiler and warmage look similar, but they're getting different types of character resources from the spell lists and class abilities. You're heading back to "is A's combat orange equal to B's social coffee cup" type questions.

I wasn't saying that Warmage and Beguiler were "simple" classes according to your proposal, but rather pointing out how much possible variation there is even between two classes with essentially no build choices and basically identical structures simply by varying the specific spells on their respective fixed and unvarying spell lists. As soon as you have different lists of "simple mage combat options" and "complex mage combat options" and "simple mage social options" and "complex mage social options" for a given character to pick from and you try to make all of those possible combinations work together, instead of a single cohesive class you can judge in aggregate, the idea that you can feasibly balance a "simple mage" with a "complex mage" goes completely out the window.

4e is probably the best possible scenario for something like that, and it only came close because it so harshly restricted the possible effects a class could get, and even then it was still, well, 4e.

The other problem with a "one social thing and one combat thing at 5th" setup is that "combat thing" and "social thing" (and "stealth thing" and "downtime thing" and "utility thing" and...) aren't nice distinct categories you can easily split up. Social-oriented mind reading/charms/language spells/etc. can be used in combat, combat-oriented shapeshifting/skill buffs/rerolls/etc. can be used in social contexts, and things like disguises and stat boosts work in both contexts and a half-dozen others besides. To make such divisions meaningful, you'd have to either sharply restrict the scope of effects until you're in 4e "identical hamstrung mechanical effects with flavor that explicitly does nothing" territory or sharply divided usage parameters until you're in 4e "powers everyone uses all the time and rituals no one ever uses" territory, neither of which are really workable.


No you don't. It's balanced with the Beguiler now. People talk about how balancing different classes is really hard, but if you look at the level of balance that actually exists in 3e, it doesn't actually seem to be. You could fill a PHB with classes that are all A) reasonably balanced and B) use different resource management systems. I'm not really sure how much more you could want in terms of "it is in fact possible to balance classes that are different".

The reason imbalance exists is because games are designed by people who are bad at math and don't face strong pressures to make a balanced product. It's not some mystery we can't solve, it's just that if you can balance a system as complicated as D&D, you can get more money from Google or Amazon than WotC would ever imagine paying you.

There are multiple kinds and levels of "balance" you can talk about. There's "balanced" in the sense that you can throw two classes in the same game in place of one another (or in the same party at the same time) and they work out pretty okay because they both have strengths and both have weaknesses and both can contribute and the game's not gonna implode, which you're talking about, and then there's "balanced" in the sense that two classes both have the same structure and same access to similar effects and same utility value in most scenarios and minigames and such and they exist within a narrow band of power relative to one another, which Telok was talking about. I'm personally fine with the former approach to balance, and I think your list of 11 classes would be a great pick for a game that deliberately restricted classes to provide a more balanced pseudo-PHB.

My point with the Sorcerer analogy was that a Sorcerer picking Warmage-like spells and an actual Warmage are like the "simple" and "complex" versions of a single Mage class, and the only way you could reasonably make the Warmage and the Sorcerer roughly evenly balanced with one another in that particular scenario is to pre-select a list for the sorcerer as well, because otherwise you can't simply look at balance between them at a single level (or even multiple level benchmarks) because the power and effectiveness of a given sorcerer's spells known overall is going to vary drastically compared to the warmage's list even if their picks look very similar at certain levels. If you're not trying to make class structures so rigid (and thus more sensitive to outlier abilities) or don't care about the simple version of a class being equivalent to the complex version so long as they're vaguely in the ballpark of one another, that stipulation goes away.


I think this is misleading, because it suggests that those abilities are inherently magical in some respect, or that we're turning martials into casters. We aren't. It's simply that 3e defined practically every ability worth having as a spell, so any new ability that does interesting things is going to feel like a caster ability, even if it's a martial one by any reasonable standard.

It's not necessarily 3e's caster focus that makes people think everything worth having is magical, but that D&D has trained people to think that things formatted like spells are magical even if they're not. As I pointed out in the Great ToB Debates of 2010, this is the Ki Blast feat from PHB2:


KI BLAST
You focus your ki into a ball of energy that you can hurl at an opponent.
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Wis 13, Fiery Fist, Improved Unarmed Strike, Stunning Fist, base attack bonus +8.
Benefit: You can expend two daily uses of your Stunning Fist feat as a move action to create an orb of raw ki energy. You can then throw the seething orb as a standard action with a range of 60 feet. This ranged touch attack deals damage equal to 3d6 points + your Wis modifier. The ki orb is a force effect.
If you fail to throw the orb before the end of your turn, it dissipates harmlessly.
When you take this feat, you gain an additional daily use of Stunning Fist.
Special: A fighter can select Ki Blast as one of his fighter bonus feats. A monk with the Stunning Fist feat can select Ki Blast as her bonus feat at 8th level, as long as she possesses the Fiery Fist feat and a base attack bonus of +6 (other prerequisites can be ignored).

..and here's the Fan the Flames maneuver from ToB:


FAN THE FLAMES
Desert Wind (Strike) [Fire]
Level: Swordsage 3
Prerequisite: One Desert Wind maneuver
lnitiation Action: I standard action
Range: 30ft.
Target: One creature
Flickering flame dances across your blade, then springs toward your target as you sweep your sword through the air.
A skilled Desert Wind adept can gather flame within his weapon and hurl it through the air. When you initiate this maneuver, you launch a fist-sized ball of white-hot fire at a single opponent.
If you make a successful ranged touch attack, your target takes 6d6 points of fire damage.
This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Both involve a vaguely-Eastern-themed mostly-martial-with-a-bit-of-magical-flavor class using something from some kind of resource pool to chuck fire at people, yet people accepted Ki Blast just fine without complaining that the monk was being turned into a caster while Fan the Flames caused an uproar because it's "too anime" or "giving martial classes spells" or (as Cluedrew put it) "mechanically a spell-like ability while being flavored very differently" because the Fan the Flames text looks like a wizard's spell block while the Ki Blast text looks like a fighter's feat block, even though the flavor is basically identical.

[Ignimortis]

Both involve a vaguely-Eastern-themed mostly-martial-with-a-bit-of-magical-flavor class using something from some kind of resource pool to chuck fire at people, yet people accepted Ki Blast just fine without complaining that the monk was being turned into a caster while Fan the Flames caused an uproar because it's "too anime" or "giving martial classes spells" or (as Cluedrew put it) "mechanically a spell-like ability while being flavored very differently" because the Fan the Flames text looks like a wizard's spell block while the Ki Blast text looks like a fighter's feat block, even though the flavor is basically identical.

Ki Blast also sucks a fair bit more ;)

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Ki Blast also sucks a fair bit more ;)

Like the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum, yeah. People complained about ToB maneuvers that were weaker than thematically-equivalent feats and class features as well back in the day, I just picked Ki Blast because the similarity to an equivalent maneuver kinda slaps the reader in the face in that way that it doesn't for, say Up the Walls vs. Dance of the Spider or Blazing Berserker vs. Flame's Blessing.

[Cluedrew]

On NigelWalmsley: I don't have much to add to your post besides: yes it does work as an existential proof. Everything else I think either still stands (its not a strategy even if it was not meant to be) or has obviously been corrected (if I say "Is that 11?" and you say "Yes it is." I'll believe you).

On Balance: The balance I aim for is "meaningful contribution". I don't want to make this thread about the definition of balance but it is roughly: often helps, sometimes takes center stage, sometimes fails spectacularly.

On Flavour: The feel of an ability does not only come from flavour text alone. If the ability says "Defeat all non-[story] enemies in this and all adjacent locations. You are defeated." you are probably 80% of the way there in figuring out what this ability is supposed to represent.* By reusing a lot of the underpinnings of the magic system for a new non-magic ability system you have primed people to see it as magic. Plus D&D magic is already pretty weird so using it to represent physical abilities starts getting contrived.

Now one can create a universal ability system that could be used for all sorts of abilities. Or you can create 11 different resources systems if you want. But you can just swap out the flavour text on something that obviously was designed for one use case and get something that fits another.


Its roughly the text of "I'll See you in Hell", which might be my favorite card in any game. The image shows a man poring out gasoline as monster rush him and the flavour text is: "He made his peace and lit the match."

[Telok]

The other problem with a "one social thing and one combat thing at 5th" setup is that "combat thing" and "social thing" (and "stealth thing" and "downtime thing" and "utility thing" and...) aren't nice distinct categories you can easily split up. Social-oriented mind reading/charms/language spells/etc. can be used in combat, combat-oriented shapeshifting/skill buffs/rerolls/etc. can be used in social contexts, and things like disguises and stat boosts work in both contexts and a half-dozen others besides. To make such divisions meaningful, you'd have to either sharply restrict the scope of effects until you're in 4e "identical hamstrung mechanical effects with flavor that explicitly does nothing" territory or sharply divided usage parameters until you're in 4e "powers everyone uses all the time and rituals no one ever uses" territory, neither of which are really workable.

Most balanced game I ever played had as chatacters a d&d dragon, a 1000 year old drunk werewolf, a cowgirl with six shooters and psychic abilities, a blind circus acrobat with an imaginary friend, and a famous movie actor who could turn into living metal. Everyone could do combat, skills, and social. Nobody was excluded from anything and all could contribute to anything if they wanted to.

Champions with a DM who actually followed the advice in the books, natch.

[NigelWalmsley]

the idea that you can feasibly balance a "simple mage" with a "complex mage" goes completely out the window.

It seems like that that point you've just changed your problem into "balance a classless system", which is reasonably achievable. I actually don't think the hard part of balancing complex and simple options is the doing of it, but doing in it a way that allows people to get what they want out of complex options without those options either feeling like a waste of time, or being overpowered.


There are multiple kinds and levels of "balance" you can talk about. There's "balanced" in the sense that you can throw two classes in the same game in place of one another (or in the same party at the same time) and they work out pretty okay because they both have strengths and both have weaknesses and both can contribute and the game's not gonna implode, which you're talking about, and then there's "balanced" in the sense that two classes both have the same structure and same access to similar effects and same utility value in most scenarios and minigames and such and they exist within a narrow band of power relative to one another, which Telok was talking about.

I don't think the distinction you're trying to make is as compelling as you think it is. If you can solve the problem of getting two different classes to contribute to "the game", then getting two different classes to contribute to any particular minigame is by definition a smaller problem. If you can make a Warmage and a Sorcerer such that you're indifferent between which of the two classes you have in the party, it's difficult for me to believe you can't write some abilities for the Warmage to use in the exploration minigame or whatever.


pre-select a list for the sorcerer as well, because otherwise you can't simply look at balance between them at a single level (or even multiple level benchmarks) because the power and effectiveness of a given sorcerer's spells known overall is going to vary drastically compared to the warmage's list even if their picks look very similar at certain levels.

Again, that just doesn't pass the smell test. There are plenty of different Sorcerer builds that are reasonably balanced with a Warmage, and giving them the ability to pick between different spells isn't inherently going to unbalance things. Look at the Warmage versus the Crusader. One's got a fixed list of options, the other can pick, and they're still reasonably balanced.


the simple version of a class being equivalent to the complex version so long as they're vaguely in the ballpark of one another

That seems like a strawman. No one expects perfect balance, but you can get a much smaller error margin than D&D has typically had without having to give up anything other than the imbalance itself.


By reusing a lot of the underpinnings of the magic system for a new non-magic ability system you have primed people to see it as magic.

Well that gets to the question of what counts as magic. Which is complicated, because the various magic-using classes have a bunch of stuff going on. What makes what a Wizard does "magic" and what a Fighter does "not magic"? Is it mechanical (e.g. spell levels, spell slots)? Thematic (e.g. calling things spells, wearing robes)? Is a Paladin martial or magical? A Crusader? Is the Barbarian's Rage a caster-like ability?

Of course, there's also the question of why we care if our sword guys are using magic. You'll find far less objection to spells like Rage or Heroics or Tenser's Transformation that turn casters into martials. And the source material makes vanishingly little distinction between "sword guy" and "spell guy" to begin with. Gandalf, probably the most iconic fantasy wizard, has a sword, and no one in the setting thinks that's at all weird. The idea that you would have a firm distinction between caster and martial is an invention of D&D, and it's one that causes more problems than it solves.

[martixy]

Here's my final answer: (which I actually arrived at pretty fast)

Casters and martials don't need to be balanced based on power level.

Casters and martials need to be balanced based on a fun level.

Fun is being able to do things in an encounter and meaningfully contribute. It's having options to choose from and meaningful decisions to make. (Hit it with a sword or a spear is not one of those. Clip its wings so it falls or interrupt its spell is one.)

Then work towards that design goal.

[Cluedrew]

Well that gets to the question of what counts as magic. Which is complicated, because the various magic-using classes have a bunch of stuff going on.Actually its very simple: there isn't an answer.

OK not quite that simple, but really it comes down to a subjective definition of a word that has so many different definitions anyways. And this would stone wall this thread if it was about finding an ready-to-go answer for every situation. My answer centered on the step "balance concepts", what concepts you are using is up to you really. And which ones are magic/caster and which ones are not will probably be debated by somebody, but if they are debated by everybody you have probably messed it up. Unless they are supposed to be in the middle which brings us to the next point:


Of course, there's also the question of why we care if our sword guys are using magic. [...] The idea that you would have a firm distinction between caster and martial is an invention of D&D, and it's one that causes more problems than it solves.Think of it as a beautiful spectrum. There is plenty of room in the middle it is true, but there are also things at either end of it as well. And if you want to include characters from those ends I don't see why you shouldn't.

To martixy: I feel the need to point out that characters in very different power levels can trample meaningful choices/contributions just by having so much more power. Other than that its sounds good.

[Psyren]

Sure let's say we start NigelWalmsley's T3/T4 base, use Ignimortis's suggestions to pick and maybe tweak a few of the classes to bring them into a slightly closer band, we are just going to hope its close enough for Psyren's over all balance concern.

I'm not sure I have a "concern" per se. I'm the one who doesn't mind a bit of disparity between casters and not-casters, so long as it doesn't get as wide as it was in 3.5, or even Core PF.

(Note that I specified "casters" here, rather than "magic-users" - because I think there is a certain amount of magic a martial can (and at high levels, should) have and still be a martial rather than a caster. Monk is a great example of this.)


Here's my final answer: (which I actually arrived at pretty fast)

Casters and martials don't need to be balanced based on power level.

Casters and martials need to be balanced based on a fun level.

Fun is being able to do things in an encounter and meaningfully contribute. It's having options to choose from and meaningful decisions to make. (Hit it with a sword or a spear is not one of those. Clip its wings so it falls or interrupt its spell is one.)

Then work towards that design goal.

Agreed, in broad strokes. The devil is in the details here, but making sure that no PC classes only have "move, attack, or full-attack" as options is a good start.