Overpowered... but Lore Accurate? Asymmetric Balance

[Greywander]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels. We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves. And it's not just the PCs; monsters are by design meant to be defeated, which often means they're little more than a big bag of HP with some special abilities. But many fantasy stories include monsters that are outright invincible except to a specific weakness.

For example, let's look at racial flight. At-will, always-on flight with no concentration is considered to be very strong. But it would be ridiculous to be playing as an aarakocra and not be able to fly.

Or consider the new yuan-ti, which have their poison immunity downgraded to a resistance and lose their Magic Resistance. Why do NPCs get to keep these traits, but my PC does not? (This one really bothers me. I'd understand if it was a learned ability, but it feels wrong for an innate trait to be nerfed or simply missing from a playable version of that creature.)

Then there's lycanthropy, with its BPS immunity. This fits with a lot of classic folklore for werewolves, but it's not always included in fantasy depictions of lycanthropes. But D&D has already established that this is something lycanthropes have, so of course a PC who becomes a lycanthrope will also have it. But it's considered to be too powerful, so the rules pretty much say that a PC who becomes a lycanthrope becomes an NPC.

A hypothetical example is regeneration, for example, with a playable troll or half-troll race. You can't be a troll and not have regeneration. But it would simply be too strong for a PC race. So what do you do if you're making a playable troll or half-troll race?

But perhaps the most quintessential example is the playable dragon. Because who hasn't wanted to play as a dragon at some point? Now, between the Dragon monk and the Dragon sorcerer, you can actually get surprising close using just RAW and refluffing some stuff, but that's not really the same as playing an actual, literal dragon, with the dragon stat block and everything. But of course this would be far too strong for a player.

It just strikes me that the pursuit of "balance" might be a fruitless one. We want things to be balanced, but we also want them to be lore-accurate. We can just make anything that's not balanced unavailable to the players, but that's going to mean cutting out a lot of options, and people want to play as some of these other creatures and monsters. Or I guess we could just make every creature equally as strong as a human, but a that point they might as well just be human, and is that even fantasy anymore? It feels like we're left with the perhaps-impossible task of walking the fine line between mechanically balanced and lore accurate, and I think trying to maintain both at the same time will only lead to problems.

Instead, what makes sense to me would be to organize playable races/etc. by power level. So if you want a game with standard balance, here are your list of playable races. If you think you can handle asymmetric balance, then you can broaden your options to include other things. I think it's entirely possible to have a campaign with a dragon, a werewolf, and a goblin as PCs; each are strong at certain things, but weak to others. A campaign centered mostly around political intrigue will largely waste the powerful abilities of dragons and lycanthropes. Even in a combat-heavy campaign you can still mix in other things so that each player has a job to do that the others can't. Gandalf is constantly busy and can't always bail the dwarves out, and there are things that only Bilbo is equipped to handle.

I guess all this to say that maybe we shouldn't obsess so much over balance, and stop to consider how it might be possible to run an asymmetrically balanced campaign. Balance is, of course, still important and desirable, it just isn't always realistically achievable, and sometimes it might be better to allow something that isn't balanced instead of trying to make it balanced.

(I'm not saying you need to let your players play as trolls or dragons or whatever, what I'm saying is if you do let a player play as a troll, they need to have regeneration. If you nerf it into oblivion, then they're not really playing a troll anymore. Either commit to the asymmetry, or restrict the game to only balanced options. The other thing I'm saying is that it can still be fun to play an asymmetric game, and that it's more in line with classic fantasy tropes. Enforced balance can make it feel too much like a game and not enough like fantasy.)

How I kind of wish the MM was set up, and I understand this would have been a lot more work, is for each monster or group of monsters to consist of a monster race and a monster class. For example, a goblin race, which defines the base abilities that all goblins have. Then you have a goblin class, allowing you to create goblin NPCs with various levels/CRs, and different subclasses for different types of goblins. Not only does this allow some customization when it comes to monsters, but it would be trivial to allow a PC to play as a monster race, and possibly take monster class levels to get some of the stronger abilities that not every monster of that type has, only the stronger ones have. Vampire spawn don't get some of the abilities that a vampire lord does, so you might need to put enough levels into the vampire class to get some of those abilities.

[Telok]

Part of the issue is that D&D is currently constrained in design space to 3-6 human size & shape characters fighting 1-12 disposable stat block monsters for a minute or so. Once you get out of that you're beyond what its designed to do.

Take even the basic ogre, they're just a big dumb human but they're "unbalanced" or something and not allowed. But why? Big & strong is nice in combat, but big & dumb is generally accepted as a negative pretty much every where else. In many systems it may be seen as a fair trade off, sort of a min-max for combat at the expense of other abilities. But in D&D its "unbalanced" or "too op" to be 9 feet tall & level 1 with 19s strength & constitution, even if you'll never be much good at anything but fighting. Thats because D&D is a fight game where all the fight stuff "needs" to be balanced, and the rest of your character is just ribbons & rp as far as the game design is concerned.

The downsides of being a werewolf, vampire, dragon, or troll is penalties to non-combat stuff. The game is designed around combat so everything noncombat can't be used to "balance" high combat abilities. Its just the way its designed.

[Catullus64]

An interesting meditation, Greywander, thanks for posting it.

When you played pretend as a child, there was always that one kid who wanted to invent new powers, or make up stuff that always made him the coolest. Sometimes there were two such kids, and the whole affair devolved into one-upsmanship between the two of them. I think fixation on balance often comes from a desire to avoid this scenario; if the rules don't create a balanced dynamic between players, there's always a fear of that kid that surfaces no matter how ostensibly adult the players are. Asymmetric balance requires a lot of trust between group members

Even though accepting the asymmetry of the game's balance would, in my opinion, be a welcome attitude adjustment for most of us who spend our time playing this Very Grown Up Make-Believe Game, there are obstacles. For one, people would still probably have very different ideas of whether balance is asymmetrical already.

Your specific proposal for the Monster Manual doesn't particularly appeal to me, if only because it brings back memories of trying to craft different monsters with levels and feats in 3.5e, and it was always tedious. And plenty of monsters just don't warrant that level of modularity; one statblock for a Rust Monster or a Basilisk is plenty.

[JackPhoenix]

While I'm firmly of the opinion that PC and NPC versions of the nominally same creature shouldn't have different abilities (and I've mentioned it before many times), and I have no problem with imbalance between characters, I'm also firm believer that not everything in the game should be available to the players. There are games that allow people to play dragons, vampires or werewolves (I think there may be an entire franchise about the later two), but 5e D&D is NOT that kind of game. Should it be? Eh, that's debatable, but I don't think so.

[Malkavia]

snip

AD&D tried to do this with different classes requiring different amount of exp to level up, and 3.5, if I'm remembering right, tried to make powerful races not be able to start play until a certain level and sort of consume levels. So, like a level 1 drow Elf would be in a part with level 3 class standard races. Neither option really felt satisfying to me, but I wouldn't mind another attempt at doing this.

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I'm firmly of the opinion that PC and NPC versions of the nominally same creature shouldn't have different abilities (and I've mentioned it before many times), and I have no problem with imbalance between characters, I'm also firm believer that not everything in the game should be available to the players. There are games that allow people to play dragons, vampires or werewolves (I think there may be an entire franchise about the later two), but 5e D&D is NOT that kind of game. Should it be? Eh, that's debatable, but I don't think so.

I basically agree with this. Not every game has to allow all options. In fact, most games shouldn't (IMO) try to allow all options. It's better to focus on a few things and do them well. More options does not mean better games. Often fewer options can be better--less often is more.

But there is fundamental asymmetry between the roles of PCs and NPCs in D&D. And for game purposes, this implies that there likely should be asymmetry between their mechanical representation.

[togapika]

We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves.


I think most folks generally regard Gandalf as an NPC tagging along sometimes. The dwarves vs Bilbo could simply be explained by them being competent fighters, and him being a rogue or something similar

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think most folks generally regard Gandalf as an NPC tagging along sometimes. The dwarves vs Bilbo could simply be explained by them being competent fighters, and him being a rogue or something similar

Or the very fact that D&D (yes, even OD&D and certainly not 5e) is not a LotR simulator. Nor is LotR some kind of ideal or aspiration for D&D. The needs of a narrative work like LotR and the needs of a cooperative roleplaying game are not the same. Tropes and ideas that work very well in one may or may not work in the other. CF all the "adaptations" of books into movies (both of which are different from each other and different from a TTRPG) that have utterly failed both as engaging pieces of art AND as representations of what's going on.

This is one reason why citations to literature as support for various proposed changes to D&D leave me cold and unpersuaded.

[AntiAuthority]

About Gandalf... I'm not super deep in LOTR lore, but wasn't he much older than his mortal traveling companions and likely had time to acquire more EXP and level up?

But the crux of the abilities you mentioned... In a lot of stories, those abilities are reserved for antagonists and/or side characters, rather than protagonists.

Regeneration? Hydra (Greek Mythology)

Physical invulnerability (to man made weapons anyway)? Nemean Lion (Greek Mythology), Grendel (Beowulf)

Dragons physically superior to mortals? Pretty much any myth or fantasy ever.

The issue is that certain races/NPCs and classes are given abilities that belong to antagonists or side characters while others were given abilities that are traditionally belonging to protagonists... And most stories have the protagonist be the underdog, so that's why NPC and/or antagonist abilities are generally more powerful than what's available to PCs of the same race.

Though part of the issue for imbalances classes is that certain classes grant abilities that would belong to antagonists and side characters while others are given underdog protagonist abilities. How many fantasy antagonists turn into huge or overpowered monsters? The former even has a trope called One Winged Angel.

[PhoenixPhyre]

About Gandalf... I'm not super deep in LOTR lore, but wasn't he much older than his mortal traveling companions and likely had time to acquire more EXP and level up?

But the crux of the abilities you mentioned... In a lot of stories, those abilities are reserved for antagonists and/or side characters, rather than protagonists.

Regeneration? Hydra (Greek Mythology)

Physical invulnerability (to man made weapons anyway)? Nemean Lion (Greek Mythology), Grendel (Beowulf)

Dragons physically superior to mortals? Pretty much any myth or fantasy ever.

The issue is that certain races/NPCs and classes are given abilities that belong to antagonists or side characters while others were given abilities that are traditionally belonging to protagonists... And most stories have the protagonist be the underdog, so that's why NPC and/or antagonist abilities are generally more powerful than what's available to PCs of the same race.

Though part of the issue for imbalances classes is that certain classes grant abilities that would belong to antagonists and side characters while others are given underdog protagonist abilities. How many fantasy antagonists turn into huge monsters or summon monsters to attack the MC?

Yeah. If we wanted to go back to the original material often cited as the basis for D&D's zeitgeist, we'd see the following highly unpopular idea:

Magic users exist as one of two things, neither of which are protagonists.

1. Enemies to get shanked/defeated by the main characters. Usually very weak to your conventional "big honking blade" strategy. Lots of flash here, all the big fancy spells. But fundamentally adversaries to be overcome.
2. Advisors who guide and point the protagonists in the right direction or assist on particular matters, while staying out of the main plot. These tend to have subtle, weak (as displayed) power.

Gandalf falls very squarely into #2. Gandalf is not a protagonist, not the person with whom you're supposed to identify. And the other wizard-figures were either enemies (Saruman), side characters (Elrond, Galadriel), or completely off-screen (the others of the Wise). And even then, their powers were small and subtle.

All of the "hero wizards" come from a much later, post D&D world. As do the ideas of playing as monsters/monsters as heroes. And make no mistake--D&D 5e characters are supposed to be heroes and protagonists, not just random dudes.

[Catullus64]

I'm going to say that part of the source of over-fixation on balance is what I'd call Competing Main Characters Disease; everybody at the table wants to be the Main Character of the story, with the coolest powers and abilities, who does most of the cool stuff (and thus, in a game mostly about killing monsters, is implicitly the most important). In a table with this problem (Far from all of them, but it's a syndrome I've seen enough of to call it widespread), balance matters a lot to make sure that no one character "wins" this race to be the Main Character.

I put it to you, fellow Playgroundians, that the less your table suffers from Competing Main Characters Disease, the less you'll find that balance matters as a goal in game. Perfect tables don't exist, so the amount that balance matters will never be zero. But for 5th Edition D&D, things are balanced enough that perfection isn't needed to reach this point.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm going to say that part of the source of over-fixation on balance is what I'd call Competing Main Characters Disease; everybody at the table wants to be the Main Character of the story, with the coolest powers and abilities, who does most of the cool stuff (and thus, in a game mostly about killing monsters, is implicitly the most important). In a table with this problem (Far from all of them, but it's a syndrome I've seen a enough to call it widespread), Balance matters a lot to make sure that no one character "wins" this race to be the Main Character.

I put it to you, fellow Playgroundians, that the less your table suffers from Competing Main Characters Disease, the less you'll find that Balance matters as a goal in game. Perfect tables don't exist, so the amount that balance matters will never be zero. But for 5th Edition D&D, things are balanced enough that perfection isn't needed to reach this point.

Completely agree. My tables have a very wide sense of "balance", because they are people all working together for the party. And taking care to boost each other and help each other look cool.

Now there are certainly things that are well outside any sense of balance that would work for my tables. Such as wish-sim loops. Or a lot of the hyper-optimization tricks.

[OldTrees1]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels. We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves. And it's not just the PCs; monsters are by design meant to be defeated, which often means they're little more than a big bag of HP with some special abilities. But many fantasy stories include monsters that are outright invincible except to a specific weakness.

You can have parties where the PCs are at different power levels. As you said later "I think it's entirely possible to have a campaign with a dragon, a werewolf, and a goblin as PCs". I have not run one of those yet but they can be done. Different games tolerate different magnitudes of power gaps. However if a party wants to have a larger power gap, usually they will have a plan for how to deal with exceeding the system's expectations.


Then there's lycanthropy, with its BPS immunity. This fits with a lot of classic folklore for werewolves, but it's not always included in fantasy depictions of lycanthropes. But D&D has already established that this is something lycanthropes have, so of course a PC who becomes a lycanthrope will also have it. But it's considered to be too powerful, so the rules pretty much say that a PC who becomes a lycanthrope becomes an NPC.

A hypothetical example is regeneration, for example, with a playable troll or half-troll race. You can't be a troll and not have regeneration. But it would simply be too strong for a PC race. So what do you do if you're making a playable troll or half-troll race?

Some species have adults that are stronger than the adults of the standard races. D&D has come up with a few solutions. However it generally boiled down to the more powerful the Troll Barbarian 1, the higher level the Troll Barbarian 1 counts as.

Insert reference to 3E Savage Species splatbook.


Instead, what makes sense to me would be to organize playable races/etc. by power level. So if you want a game with standard balance, here are your list of playable races. If you think you can handle asymmetric balance, then you can broaden your options to include other things.

This would also open the door for campaigns where everyone picks from a band of non standard playable races but it is still a symmetric balance within the party. A Troll, Ghast, Wyrmling, & Doppelganger party perhaps.


I guess all this to say that maybe we shouldn't obsess so much over balance, and stop to consider how it might be possible to run an asymmetrically balanced campaign. Balance is, of course, still important and desirable, it just isn't always realistically achievable, and sometimes it might be better to allow something that isn't balanced instead of trying to make it balanced.

Game System Standards:
When there is a reliable measure of power level, then it helps me roughly tune the symmetry or asymmetry to fit the campaign. I believe game devs could provide such a metric. However 5E has made me unsure whether I need to choose whether I ask for diverse playable species or ask for game devs to provide a power level metric. I don't think it should be an "either or" situation but I don't see 5E rules for powerful playable species (like the Troll, Lycan, or Dragon examples) yet.

Campaign Standards:
I don't worry about balance that much with my playgroup. While we have not run noticeably asymmetric balanced campaigns, I don't think it would be an issue.


How I kind of wish the MM was set up, and I understand this would have been a lot more work, is for each monster or group of monsters to consist of a monster race and a monster class. For example, a goblin race, which defines the base abilities that all goblins have. Then you have a goblin class, allowing you to create goblin NPCs with various levels/CRs, and different subclasses for different types of goblins. Not only does this allow some customization when it comes to monsters, but it would be trivial to allow a PC to play as a monster race, and possibly take monster class levels to get some of the stronger abilities that not every monster of that type has, only the stronger ones have. Vampire spawn don't get some of the abilities that a vampire lord does, so you might need to put enough levels into the vampire class to get some of those abilities.

Yeah. Insert reference to 3E Savage Species splatbook. I too wish that.

[Unoriginal]

About Gandalf... I'm not super deep in LOTR lore, but wasn't he much older than his mortal traveling companions and likely had time to acquire more EXP and level up?

He was literally older than the planet they were on.

[Kane0]

Mildly off-topic, I don't think a playable half-troll race would be wildly unbalanced. Their regeneration is the only real trait they get, besides maybe darkvision and natural attacks, just have the regen be limited to Prof or half Prof bonus and negated for a minute instead of a round by Fire/Acid damage.

[Kvess]

I notice these conversations rarely go in the other direction. If you play a kobold PC, you’re not restricted by stat blocks in the monster manual. Your character could reach level 20, max out several attributes, and take levels of classes that might not be “lore accurate” for other kobolds in your setting. Heck, kobold PCs start with abilities that NPC kobolds don’t get.

Is it more ‘accurate’ to play a more powerful than average kobold than a nerfed troll?

Speaking of…


Mildly off-topic, I don't think a playable half-troll race would be wildly unbalanced. Their regeneration is the only real trait they get, besides maybe darkvision and natural attacks, just have the regen be limited to Prof or half Prof bonus and negated for a minute instead of a round by Fire/Acid damage.
I’m not opposed to unbalanced options, but I think it’s worth pointing out that even minor regeneration is a bigger deal than you’re giving it credit for. After combat ends, you’d heal back to your maximum hitpoints after a minute or so.

[Greywander]

There are games that allow people to play dragons, vampires or werewolves (I think there may be an entire franchise about the later two), but 5e D&D is NOT that kind of game. Should it be? Eh, that's debatable, but I don't think so.
I'll agree that D&D isn't designed for this, but nevertheless such creatures do exist in D&D. The way that they can simultaneously exist while not being that kind of game is to never allow the players to play as those creatures. But inevitably there will be players who want to play as such creatures anyway. I'm not saying there should necessarily be official rules for it (though that would be nice), more that DMs should keep an open mind if a player requests such, or even propose to the players to run such a campaign. It can work, and it can be fun, despite the obvious pitfalls you'd need to avoid. D&D isn't designed for it, but like a lot of TTRPGs D&D isn't so much a game unto itself as it is an aid people use to go on fantastic imaginary adventures. You can play it strictly according to the rules, with all the Punpun-level exploits that implies, but most tables are willing to set aside the rules if it gets in the way of fun.

Basically, this is definitely non-standard play, but it can be fun and I wish we saw more of it. If e.g. the paladin is secretly a silver dragon in disguise, that could make for a big plot reveal later on, particularly if the party is in a sore bit of trouble and the sudden appearance of a friendly dragon might be exactly what they need to save their bacon. You could also go the other way; one party member could be a doppelganger who is secretly working against the party. As long as all the players can be good sports about it, playing according to their characters while also making sure all the other players are having fun, then these kinds of surprise twists in an otherwise standard party can make the game more interesting and unexpected. A party full of OP monsters can also be fun in its own way.


I think most folks generally regard Gandalf as an NPC tagging along sometimes. The dwarves vs Bilbo could simply be explained by them being competent fighters, and him being a rogue or something similar
I could see Gandalf being a DMPC, but there's no reason he couldn't be run by a player. He actually kind of fits the profile for a player who has sporadic scheduling conflicts and can't make it to every session or shows up or leaves halfway through. My point is, he's in the party, why would we just assume he's not a PC?


About Gandalf... I'm not super deep in LOTR lore, but wasn't he much older than his mortal traveling companions and likely had time to acquire more EXP and level up?
He's an in-setting angel, probably the equivalent of having a solar with wizard (or druid?) levels tagging along with the party. That said, LotR gives such characters a much more subtle power, so it's not like he's blasting laser beams everywhere. IIRC, there's one point where the party climbs into several trees when they're attacked by goblins, and he lights pine cones on fire and throws them. That's about the most offensive you see him with magic. He also fights with a magic sword.

D&D, and a lot of video games (and anime), have conditions us to think of angels or gods as being super strong, when a lot of folklore tends to depict powerful spirits more along the lines of a regular guy but with a few cantrips and/or low level spells. If you stabbed Gandalf, I think he'd probably die same as any man, and he can't lift massive weights or punch mountains or shoot lasers. He has power, but it's more subtle in nature.


But the crux of the abilities you mentioned... In a lot of stories, those abilities are reserved for antagonists and/or side characters, rather than protagonists.
I think part of the issue is that D&D is clearly inspired by these fantasy tales, but at the same time isn't a fantasy tale such as these. If you were to write a book based on D&D, you probably wouldn't write the protagonist as a troll or vampire. This isn't going to stop players from trying to play as trolls and vampires on occasion. So we end up with a fantasy setting leaning on a bunch of classic fantasy tropes, but isn't bound by the same narrative structure, so you're free to shuffle around those fantasy tropes into new combinations. An all-lycanthrope party? Sure, why not? D&D gives us the freedom to decide to do that, if we want to.


Mildly off-topic, I don't think a playable half-troll race would be wildly unbalanced. Their regeneration is the only real trait they get, besides maybe darkvision and natural attacks, just have the regen be limited to Prof or half Prof bonus and negated for a minute instead of a round by Fire/Acid damage.
A while back I wrote up a regeneration trait that could be a racial trait or a feat, in an attempt to provide something balanced for just such a case. What I did was split the regeneration into short-term and long-term. So short-term, you got temp HP at the start of each turn, to represent partially regenerating injuries you had just received. Long-term, you regained a number of HP every hour, and could regrow body parts while resting. I guess it was "balanced", but I don't think it really felt like the real deal. Maybe it would make sense for a half-troll, but if used for a full troll then it would be a case of nerfing it to the point that it doesn't feel like a real troll.


While I'm firmly of the opinion that PC and NPC versions of the nominally same creature shouldn't have different abilities (and I've mentioned it before many times),

I notice these conversations rarely go in the other direction. If you play a kobold PC, you’re not restricted by stat blocks in the monster manual. Your character could reach level 20, max out several attributes, and take levels of classes that might not be “lore accurate” for other kobolds in your setting. Heck, kobold PCs start with abilities that NPC kobolds don’t get.

Is it more ‘accurate’ to play a more powerful than average kobold than a nerfed troll?
I agree, I like parity between PCs and NPCs if they're supposed to be the same thing. This is kind of the crux of the issue: trying to balance a powerful monster to be playable necessarily means watering it down and making it different from the NPC version. As for kobolds, PC kobolds are stronger than NPC kobolds for the same reasons that a PC human is stronger than a human commoner. You can totally give an NPC kobold class levels if you want.

This is part of why I said I wanted monsters to be designed as a monster race with a monster class, as this actually would allow you to have high CR kobold champions of Tiamat or something. Doing it this way would also mean that a PC using a monster race would be working off of the same racials as that monster, so even if the monster class is weaker than a PC class it would still feel more like a monster of that type who walked a different path instead of a totally different kind of creature.

It's also worth mentioning that even among playable races, such as humans, you'll rarely find an NPC who's higher than mid level, and most are going to be low level if they have any level equivalent at all. Most humans are commoners. Any human who does achieve high levels (or equivalent) is going to be a notable character, not a random background NPC (unless the DM is trying to curb a party of murderhobos).

[KorvinStarmast]

AD&D tried to do this with different classes requiring different amount of exp to level up, That was in the original game. It's right there in Men and Magic.

[Unoriginal]

I could see Gandalf being a DMPC, but there's no reason he couldn't be run by a player.

Aside from the fact he's a demigod.



He's an in-setting angel, probably the equivalent of having a solar with wizard (or druid?) levels tagging along with the party. That said, LotR gives such characters a much more subtle power, so it's not like he's blasting laser beams everywhere. IIRC, there's one point where the party climbs into several trees when they're attacked by goblins, and he lights pine cones on fire and throws them. That's about the most offensive you see him with magic. He also fights with a magic sword.

The pinecone event happened in the Hobbit. The most "offensive" you see him with magic would be in Fellowship of the Ring:


The night was old, and westward the waning moon was setting. gleaming fitfully through the breaking clouds. Suddenly Frodo started from sleep. Without warning a storm of howls broke out fierce and wild all about the camp. A great host of Wargs had gathered silently and was now attacking them from every side at once.

`Fling fuel on the fire!' cried Gandalf to the hobbits. `Draw your blades, and stand back to back!'

In the leaping light, as the fresh wood blazed up, Frodo saw many grey shapes spring over the ring of stones. More and more followed. Through the throat of one huge leader Aragorn passed his sword with a thrust; with a great sweep Boromir hewed the head off another. Beside them Gimli stood with his stout legs apart, wielding his dwarf-axe. The bow of Legolas was singing.

In the wavering firelight Gandalf seemed suddenly to grow: he rose up, a great menacing shape like the monument of some ancient king of stone set upon a hill. Stooping like a cloud, he lifted a burning branch and strode to meet the wolves. They gave back before him. High in the air he tossed the blazing brand. It flared with a sudden white radiance like lightning; and his voice rolled like thunder.

`Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth!' he cried.

There was a roar and a crackle, and the tree above him burst into a leaf and bloom of blinding flame. The fire leapt from tree-top to tree-top. The whole hill was crowned with dazzling light. The swords and knives of the defenders shone and flickered. The last arrow of Legolas kindled in the air as it flew, and plunged burning into the heart of a great wolf-chieftain. All the others fled.

Slowly the fire died till nothing was left but falling ash and sparks; a bitter smoke curled above the burned tree-stumps, and blew darkly from the hill, as the first light of dawn came dimly in the sky. Their enemies were routed and did not return.

`What did I tell you, Mr. Pippin? ' said Sam, she/thing his sword. `Wolves won't get him. That was an eye-opener, and no mistake! Nearly singed the hair off my head!'

-Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 3.




D&D, and a lot of video games (and anime), have conditions us to think of angels or gods as being super strong, when a lot of folklore tends to depict powerful spirits more along the lines of a regular guy but with a few cantrips and/or low level spells. If you stabbed Gandalf, I think he'd probably die same as any man, and he can't lift massive weights or punch mountains or shoot lasers. He has power, but it's more subtle in nature.

"Subtle" is one way to put it, but it isn't quite accurate.

In Tolkien's work, power is authority. Authority over people and over the world in general.

Gandalf says "you cannot pass", and the Balrog cannot pass. Gandalf says the Witch-King cannot enter Minas Tirith, and the Witch-King cannot enter. Gandalf says that the Prancing Poney's beer will be delicious for years, and it is. And Gandalf certainly didn't need to speak a word to neutralise Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas during their encounter in Fangorn, or to incapacitate Grima in Theoden's hall, as his will alone was enough.


Even Frodo attempts it, although he doesn't succeed until the end of his quest. One of this first attempts:


Suddenly the foremost Rider spurred his horse forward. It checked at the water and reared up. With a great effort Frodo sat upright and brandished his sword.

'Go back!' he cried. 'Go back to the Land of Mordor, and follow me no more! ' His voice sounded thin and shrill in his own ears. The Riders halted, but Frodo had not the power of Bombadil. His enemies laughed at him with a harsh and chilling laughter. 'Come back! Come back!' they called. 'To Mordor we will take you!'

'Go back!' he whispered.

'The Ring! The Ring!' they cried with deadly voices; and immediately their leader urged his horse forward into the water, followed closely by two others.

'By Elbereth and Lúthien the Fair,' said Frodo with a last effort, lifting up his sword, 'you shall have neither the Ring nor me!'

Then the leader, who was now half across the Ford, stood up menacing in his stirrups, and raised up his hand. Frodo was stricken dumb. He felt his tongue cleave to his mouth, and his heart labouring. His sword broke and fell out of his shaking hand.

Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, chapter 12.

Note the recurring pattern of weapons breaking to signify a clash of will going in favor of one or the other.


So in principle you could say that Gandalf could die if he was stabbed, but factually:

1) he wouldn't die like any man, his immortal self would just go back to the far away green country and beyond, requiring a new physical body to come back.

2) he wouldn't actually get stabbed by anyone unless their power-authority could triumph over his. And three of the greatest heroes of Middle-Earth's Third Age couldn't.

[Tanarii]

PCs do have different power. It's called character levels. Nothing says they have to be the same within a party, that's just a common convention most groups accept as the most fun.

Monsters do have different power. It's measured by CR. Nothing says PCs cannot fight monsters they would find it hard/impossible to defeat, nor a breeze. That's just a common convention most groups accept as the most fun.

Player races should be balanced. There's no need for the majority of the ones outside the PHB anyway, nor even some of the ones in it. Looking at you Dragonborn and Tiefling. Humans and Demi humans are all that is needed. Flying bird-men, turtle-men, cat-men, dragon-men ... none of that is needed. Nor are werewolves or vampire PCs. Even humanoid PCs (ie Orcs/Goblinoids/Kobolds etc) are best restricted to a campaign where you're playing them in their own societies fighting to conquer the human / Demi human lands like the scourge on civilization they are.

One of these may just be an opinion. :smallamused:

[greenstone]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels. We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves.

That's because what works in fiction doesn't necessarily work at the game table.

The understanding about balance is that players should have a (roughly) balanced experience compared to each other. It's fine in a TV show to have unbalanced characters, because the writers can write around it. At the table most people would not have fun if they had Stanley Tweedle and the person next to them had Zev.

Think of it from a GM's persepctive. How do you balance an encounter when the party has a level 20 immortal wizard (Gandalf), a bunch of level 10 fighters and barbarians (the dwarves) and a level 1 rogue (Bilbo)?

[LudicSavant]

How do you balance an encounter when the party has a level 20 immortal wizard (Gandalf), a bunch of level 10 fighters and barbarians (the dwarves) and a level 1 rogue (Bilbo)?

There's lots of ways that game designers have answered questions like this in the past.

One example: One player spends all of their army points on Gandalf, another spends all their army points on the dwarves and Bilbo.

[Telok]

There's lots of ways that game designers have answered questions like this in the past.

One example: One player spends all of their army points on Gandalf, another spends all their army points on the dwarves and Bilbo.

Another is using more narrative than simulationist mechanics. If the powerful wizard and novice rogue have the same level of mechanical agency & effectiveness within the game then they're the same "power level".

Mayby its done with action economy & noncombat division of labor? Gandalf is moderately famous, sometimes trusted but often mistrusted and a single person with specific skills. The dwarves and hobbit, being more normal, may raise fewer suspicions and accomplish more in certain circumstances just by being more warm bodies to throw at a problem. And there seems a distinct possibility that Bilbo is the only one of them all who takes regular baths or can cook food without burning it.

[qube]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels.Do note that in literature, balance is enforced by the plot. In a good book, the plot naturally evolves in situations where the "weaker" characters are more useful then the more "powerful" characters. Considering you mention The Hobbit, consider


Gandalf teleports the ring into mount doom. The End

In LOTR, Gandalf can't teleport. In D&D, you need to contrive a reason why the the wizard can't.
Inherent to a story, is that it's textbook railroading. In D&D you typically want to give your players some agency;


Or I guess we could just make every creature equally as strong as a human, but a that point they might as well just be human, and is that even fantasy anymore?But, how strong is a human? I could point to almost any shonen anime, but if we're talking about literature
Beowolf is (IIRC) human, yet he singlehandedly slays dragons.
King Arthur can't be defeated (the scarab of excalibur made him immune to damage),
...



I guess all this to say that maybe we shouldn't obsess so much over balance, and stop to consider how it might be possible to run an asymmetrically balanced campaign. Balance is, of course, still important and desirable, it just isn't always realistically achievable, and sometimes it might be better to allow something that isn't balanced instead of trying to make it balanced.If you, as a DM can consistantly manage to give the dragon and the goblins equal spotlight, go right ahead. But that's a big if.

'cause here's a fact of life: Players who tend to be spotlight hogs tend to be drawn to builds that facilitate them.

[Dark.Revenant]

D&D and its ilk are all designed for, and most suited for, playing as the underdogs. You might be badass, but the dangers you face are much badder and definitely more asser. Your characters don't build the dungeons, don't raise the armies of (dis)loyal minions, and don't enact the world-ending plots—your enemies do. When all you've got is blades and cantrips, your enemies have forts and fireballs. When you've taken your own fortress, your enemies rule a whole kingdom. When you've taken over a kingdom, your enemies own entire worlds. For every miraculous feat you accomplish, for every mighty power you obtain, someone else out there has something even better. And they want to kill you.

As long as you maintain this theme, the soul of D&D lives on. This particular edition of the game, however, lacks support for raising the power level beyond already-obtainable levels. Any optimizer knows that you don't need fancy homebrew content or monster races to slaughter the most powerful stat blocks in the game. If you still want to go through with it, you're largely on your own for high-tier content, and much of the careful bounded accuracy of 5e starts to break down completely: attacks will start to (effectively) auto-hit or auto-miss, saves will auto-pass or auto-fail, advantage/disadvantage will get out of hand, health will massively outstrip damage—or vice-versa. It gets even worse if you permit abilities that are normally out-of-scope for player characters, such as immunity to a wide range of common damage types, limitless regeneration, far-beyond-tier modes of movement (e.g. long-distance flight, wall-tunneling, BLOS teleportation) or information warfare (e.g. mind control, long-distance telepathy, long-distance scrying), sizes too large to fit into adventure locations or interact with NPCs, etc.

Balance between individual members of a group is secondary to the foregoing, but still important in an abstract sense. It's not so much absolute power that must be balanced—even characters of the same level can vary wildly in effectiveness—but rather player agency which must be balanced. D&D, whose rules revolve primarily around combat, inherently demonstrates agency for players who are able to contribute meaningfully in combat; however, the exact ratios of contribution are less important. If a player gains full werewolf powers, I think it's likely problematic. But it's not the fact that only one of the players has werewolf powers that causes the most problems; it's the fact that any player has werewolf powers at all.


PS. The most consistent solution to deal with discrepancies between lore and mechanics is to disallow options that, for balance reasons, must be neutered to fit within the confines of player capability. However, WotC—being a for-profit business—values money over lore-accuracy...

[Rukelnikov]

I've said it many times and i'll say it again, being better in combat doesn't amount to greater player agency. PCs are expected to trump their foes in 90% or more combat encounters, so being better at combating foes only means the expected result is achieved easier. That's not, at least in my interpretation, "player agency".

Now, teleporting people around, raising the dead king, dominating/charming/modifying the memories of NPCs, creating fortresses/landmasses/planes, those kind of things, if acknlowedged in world, are sources of palpable player agency.

On to the monsters as PCs, I've always liked the idea that creatures in the world are just that, creatures, they have motives, pasts, etc, as every other inhabitant of the setting, this is why while 4e minions mechanically fitted their role perfectly, from a worldbuilding perspective they felt awful. 5e designers, for some reason, don't want to print large races, and so we got the medium sized centaur, whose size is actually fit to ride on horseback... and medium sized Minotaurs... those should be clear indicators of how the magic is lost in translation from NPC to PC. I'm of the mind, that those are not really centaurs or minotaurs, but something else with a resemblance, cause if your PC meets other of his race it will be immediatelly apparent that they are not centaurs/minotaurs (of course they can be another kind of centaurs/minotaurs... If prior to that the player wasn't feeling robbed already, at that point they'll do)

But then how do we balance these by-desing extra powerful beings with run of the mill powerful beings?

2e's answer was slower leveling, you would get all the goodies upfront but from then on you always leveled slower (%XP penalty), 3e started by counting your monster HD+Level Adjustment (a "balancing" factor depending on the creatures abilities) as character levels, for instance a Troll without class level was considered to be character level 11, and a Troll with 6 levels of Ranger would be considered character level 17. This in essence was similar to 2e's idea of slower leveling, since you would always be some levels behind a "vanilla" race character, how much depending on the specific creature in question.

However, different from 2e's implementation, this also meant creatures had a "base level", you could put a ftr 1 troll in a party with ftr 1 humans, but the game is telling you that ftr 1 Troll is equivalent to a 12th level character. In effect trolls were playable as 11th level creatures and beyond. In order to allow for this hagh base level creatures to be playable from the early levels, they afterwards came up with turning those racial HD+LA into basically class level, the Troll would have 11 class levels, and would culminate being as the MM Troll, but this had the side effect of the character not really having its core schticks from the get go, said Troll for instance wouldn't get regen until level 4. 5e has taken this same approach, but without the progression that allows for the eventual realization of the creature.

[qube]

I've said it many times and i'll say it again, being better in combat doesn't amount to greater player agency. PCs are expected to trump their foes in 90% or more combat encounters, so being better at combating foes only means the expected result is achieved easier. That's not, at least in my interpretation, "player agency".Do note it's player agency - not party agency. The player should have the feeling his/her decisions matter. The fact that the party is expected to win, is only secondairy.

With combat typically being a big part of a gaming session (if not in importance, it's still big RL time spend) - if the player feels it doesn't matter if he/she is or isn't part of the combat or not, because the other guy can solo the fight anyway. ... I would argue, this falls under the "player agency" problem.

if nothing else - it warrents the DM to take this into account, and make (non-combat) challenges where said player not only feels useful, but feels like he's the one solving the problem at hand. To give the player the feeling his character is of equal importance to the party.

[Warder]

I've said this before, but balance ranks pretty low on the stuff-that's-important-to-have-fun scale. There's (almost) no situation in which players think back to a game and remember it fondly for how well balanced it was - but there are of course situations where imbalance can create frustration. And since balancing always comes at a cost - decreased verisimilitude, stunted mechanics, etc etc - the key is to view it as a necessary evil and not let it get in the way more than it has to. In my opinion, at least.

With that as my PoV, I will say that I absolutely do not feel balance within the party is remotely necessary. It's fine for casters to wield greater power than martials, and it's more than fine to have optimized characters in the same party as unoptimized characters. Rolling for stats is fine, even if someone gets great stats and someone gets poor stats. Picking the stats you want yourself is fine too! The key thing to remember is simply that everyone should be able to play the role they want without someone else overshadowing them. If your motivation is to play a hobbit out of their element but rising to the occasion, you're probably going to be fine with being weaker in combat than the player who wants to be the rightful king of Gondor wielding his ancestral sword in combat. You probably wouldn't be fine having the rightful king of Gondor being better than you at stealth & resisting corruptive magics, though, since that's the niche you wanted for yourself.

As such I don't think balancing is a mechanical issue really, it's a social issue where the best solutions to it are also social solutions. Have a session zero, figure out who you want to play and the role you want in the party and communicate it to everyone else. That should take care of almost every case, provided you have a group who trust each other enough to play things that way. Now, I know that won't be every group, and a baseline of mechanical balance is going to be important no matter what; the necessary evil. But I don't think it needs to be oppressive or "perfect", and it certainly shouldn't be a major limiting factor in design choices.

[Waazraath]

snip

Older editions did this quite well imo. AD&D had specific drawbacks for monstrous races in Skills & Powers (hideous appearance, monstrous form, claustrofobia - all having severe effects, claustrofobia for a flying race gave -3 to attack rolls indoors and underground for example, a steep price for wings) and 3.x had several ways to do this - mostly the already mentioned level adjustment (part of core) but also Bloodlines (in Unearthed Arcana) which were excellently balanced at least as good as the rest of the edition.

(for the ones not played 3.x, balance was hideous, and level adjustments were all over the place, but that included some of them were in the right place so it can be done well).

But this is imo one of the things we lost in 5e's streamlining, for good or for bad.

[Kane0]

Well we have racial feats to partially simulate that I guess?

[Pex]

The bigger picture of player agency is spotlight time. It's nice for a PC to have a power button to push to affect the game environment in a non-combat situation, but that's not necessarily a requirement for a player to feel included. If a game mechanic is needed there are skills and background features. Sometimes it's just roleplay. The player engaged the world in exploring and talking to NPCs. The world responds to the player's character because he's there, and that's the game. The game mechanics are important and matter, but other times the dice are left alone. There can be an all roleplaying session where everyone just talks and not one die is rolled. This can happen as a follow-up after a major fight, a prelude to a fight to come, or simply just a relaxing session of everyone doing downtime activities of narrative. The players are engaging the gameworld. That is what matters, not who is responsible for getting the party half way across the world.

[MoiMagnus]

My opinion is that the "core" of the game should be balance.

It's fine for campaign-specific magic or whatever to be unbalanced.
(So yeah, if you find the infinity stones, they will be unbalanced)
More generally, it's fine for homebrew to be unbalanced in a way in a way that was intended.

But unbalance should not come at a surprise. D&D is a game, and there is an implicit contract between the rules and the players that the options that are at the core of the game are balanced with each others unless specified otherwise.

If there is the class "Bard" at the middle of the list of class "Paladin, Wizard, etc", then I expect this Bard to be more than a performer playing music. Otherwise this musician should have been put in another section (or supplement) of the game with other classes "not advised for adventurers" like "Mathematician" or "Barman".

I think a good example of that in 5e is playing a Vampire. There is a small section in the MM about how to stat a Vampire PC. It's obviously not balanced with the regular races, and there is no expectation for it to be so. Another example are the special familiar that give you magic resistance, they're not expected to be balanced with the regular familiars and it's fine.

In general, I think features of the game presented in a way that make player feel entitled to them should be balanced with each others. And it follows that "character creation", the part that is often done by the player alone without GM supervision, should be balanced as much as possible. It's fine to have unbalanced things in character creation, but they should be explicitly flagged as such (in the same way that Mutant & Mastermind repeat every other page that the powers you create for your character must be approved by your GM on a case-by-case basis, because not every campaign would work well with actual time travel or literal immortality).

[qube]

The bigger picture of player agency is spotlight time. It's nice for a PC to have a power button to push to affect the game environment in a non-combat situation, but that's not necessarily a requirement for a player to feel included. If a game mechanic is needed there are skills and background features. Sometimes it's just roleplay.Quite true ... but not all power buttons are dice rolls either.

If you just roleplay instead of using dice, it's easy to grasp how a dragon - on the simple account of being a dragon - will probbably have an easier time persuading townfolk, then a goblin. (To use the OP's example of an assymetric party - a dragon, a werewolf, and a goblin as PCs).

More powerful races typically don't only have better numbers - they typically also the superior non-mechanical flavor.

[JackPhoenix]

It should be noted that Hobbit Gandalf and LotR Gandalf are not the same character. In Hobbit, he was just a random wizard, his role and nature was upgraded in LotR, just like the Ring went from just a random ring of invisibility to the artifact the entire trilogy was based around. The Hobbit was created as stand-alone piece of writting, not a prequel to LotR.

And LotR Gandalf had more power than he's shown, he was not allowed to use it. He wasn't quite on Sauron's level, but he coud easily match him if he claimed the ring...but the end result wouldn't be pretty. The role of wizards was to guide and inspire the people of Middle-Earth, not to fight the evil directly, to avoid the repeat of Numenor's destruction.


I agree, I like parity between PCs and NPCs if they're supposed to be the same thing. This is kind of the crux of the issue: trying to balance a powerful monster to be playable necessarily means watering it down and making it different from the NPC version. As for kobolds, PC kobolds are stronger than NPC kobolds for the same reasons that a PC human is stronger than a human commoner. You can totally give an NPC kobold class levels if you want.

See, that's the thing: You think powerful monsters should be playable. I disagree with that. Monsters and PCs fill different role in the context of the game. When it comes to kobolds, I don't mind PC kobolds to be somewhat stronger than NPC kobolds. What I do mind is for PC kobolds to lack the iconic ability every other kobold in the game has (Pack Tactics), though my usual example is hobgoblin, which, again, lack the iconic hobgoblin ability of Martial Advantage (and less said about the abomination presented in MP:MotM, the better) and doesn't even serve well for the soldier race hobgoblins should be.


This is part of why I said I wanted monsters to be designed as a monster race with a monster class, as this actually would allow you to have high CR kobold champions of Tiamat or something. Doing it this way would also mean that a PC using a monster race would be working off of the same racials as that monster, so even if the monster class is weaker than a PC class it would still feel more like a monster of that type who walked a different path instead of a totally different kind of creature.

3.x did that (to the point that racial HD worked like classes with no abilities). I, as a GM, don't want to go back to those days. Having to create NPCs using PC formula is pointless waste of time. You can do it for a boss if you want, but even then it's better to just pick whatever abilities and stats you want and slap them on a NPC-friendly chasis. One of the great things about 5e is that if I want to create non-combatant NPC sage, I can just give arbitrary Arcana bonus (assuming I even care about that on an NPC) to a commoner, while in 3e, the required skill bonus ALSO came with the combat ability of an entire squad of soldiers... unless, of course, you've decided to ignore the rules for creating NPCs, making the whole thing pointless.

[ZRN]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels. We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves.

This is a solved problem in D&D, and the key is the word "levels." The whole point of having character levels is to establish a baseline for the relative power of different characters. If a level 10 wizard is better at everything than a level 10 fighter, or if a level 10 elf is way more powerful than a level 10 goblin, "level 10" is meaningless.


How I kind of wish the MM was set up, and I understand this would have been a lot more work, is for each monster or group of monsters to consist of a monster race and a monster class. For example, a goblin race, which defines the base abilities that all goblins have. Then you have a goblin class, allowing you to create goblin NPCs with various levels/CRs, and different subclasses for different types of goblins. Not only does this allow some customization when it comes to monsters, but it would be trivial to allow a PC to play as a monster race, and possibly take monster class levels to get some of the stronger abilities that not every monster of that type has, only the stronger ones have. Vampire spawn don't get some of the abilities that a vampire lord does, so you might need to put enough levels into the vampire class to get some of those abilities.

I think they did something like this in late 3e. Seems a bit messy for 5e, but you could expand on racial feats to allow characters to lean into their racial traits without getting out of whack in terms of overall power level.

[DeadMech]

Level adjustment always felt like a steep price to play monster races but it is one way to let races with more interesting and powerful features be playable.

If that's not for you then you'll just have to invent lore for why PC's are weaker than monsters.

Maybe the Yuan-ti PC, being a traveler and separated from their colony is forced to forgo the weird snake rituals that gave and reinforce their poison and magic resistances.

Maybe the PC werewolf hasn't developed the full immunity to mundane non silvered weapons because they have only received the affliction recently.

Maybe Kobolds working with more typical PC races aren't as practiced in teaming with medium sized creatures. Maybe their tactics rely on allies who are less self preserving and more willing to take risks for the group.

[Rukelnikov]

Do note it's player agency - not party agency. The player should have the feeling his/her decisions matter. The fact that the party is expected to win, is only secondairy.

With combat typically being a big part of a gaming session (if not in importance, it's still big RL time spend) - if the player feels it doesn't matter if he/she is or isn't part of the combat or not, because the other guy can solo the fight anyway. ... I would argue, this falls under the "player agency" problem.

if nothing else - it warrents the DM to take this into account, and make (non-combat) challenges where said player not only feels useful, but feels like he's the one solving the problem at hand. To give the player the feeling his character is of equal importance to the party.

Maybe our dfinitions of "player agency" are different, to me it means the ability of the player to impact on the setting or story, usually thru their PC (in dnd its almost exclusively thru their PC, but that's not always the case in other systems). So getting the spotlight, or being irrelevant in a fight have no weight in terms of how much agency a given player has.


Maybe the Yuan-ti PC, being a traveler and separated from their colony is forced to forgo the weird snake rituals that gave and reinforce their poison and magic resistances.

Maybe the PC werewolf hasn't developed the full immunity to mundane non silvered weapons because they have only received the affliction recently.

Maybe Kobolds working with more typical PC races aren't as practiced in teaming with medium sized creatures. Maybe their tactics rely on allies who are less self preserving and more willing to take risks for the group.

I've read many of these kind of arguments, but isn't that the same as saying "you can't play those races"? If you are gonna be a werewolf without the immunity to non silvered weapons, or a troll without regeneration, then you aren't either of those creatures, then why jump hoops to basically say you can't play them? Just say you can't and be done with it.

[qube]

Maybe our dfinitions of "player agency" are different, to me it means the ability of the player to impact on the setting or story, usually thru their PC (in dnd its almost exclusively thru their PC, but that's not always the case in other systems).Yet I don't see why combat wouldn't fall under this. Considering the story would typically take a decent twist if a combat is lost. Even if said combat has nothing to do with the main story line.

When you felt useless in the combat against a side quest hag,
you feel you had no meaningful impact on the outcome of the fight,
you feel you had no meaningful impact on the future of villager questgivers (are they saved, or are they still haunted for generations to come?),
... and that would fall under setting or story
a.k.a. player agancy.

If you're assuming that everyone is in a mindset that combat isn't something that has impact ... well ... in said mindset, nobody would feel (especially) useless, because basically, what they are doing basically is useless.

[Rukelnikov]

Yet I don't see why combat wouldn't fall under this. Considering the story would typically take a decent twist if a combat is lost. Even if said combat has nothing to do with the main story line.

When you felt useless in the combat against a side quest hag,
you feel you had no meaningful impact on the outcome of the fight,
you feel you had no meaningful impact on the future of villager questgivers (are they saved, or are they still haunted for generations to come?),
... and that would fall under setting or story
a.k.a. player agancy.

If you're assuming that everyone is in a mindset that combat isn't something that has impact ... well ... in said mindset, nobody would feel (especially) useless, because basically, what they are doing basically is useless.

I'm not saying its useless, but defeating the foes is the expected outcome, coming on top in an unlikely combat would be a special case, but how many of those combats do you get per campaign? 3 or 4 at most?

IDK, I likely value combat less than the average player, since I'm the kind of player that focuses on social skills and utility for my main char in CRPGs cause the companions can handle combat by themselves.

[qube]

IDK, I likely value combat less than the average player, since I'm the kind of player that focuses on social skills and utility for my main char in CRPGs cause the companions can handle combat by themselvesBut what makes combat different? Especially as you bring CRPGs into this: Everything you can do can be considered to be "expected". To quote your list:


Now, teleporting people around, raising the dead king, dominating/charming/modifying the memories of NPCs, creating fortresses/landmasses/planes, those kind of things, if acknlowedged in world, are sources of palpable player agency.

These are all things that need to be programmed & thus are expected. It's hard to see how


Get in the castle by killing the guard = not player agency.
Get in the castle by modify memory on guard = player agency

Oppositely, I'd argue the determining factor is the importance of the challenge.

If you feel useless during a challenge that is not important (or that you don't find important), that's not going to have a big impact on how you feel your agency is infuenced.
If you feel useless during a challenge that is important (or that you feel to be important), that is going to have a big impact on how you feel your agency is infuenced.

But this is indepentant wether a challenge is a combat or non-combat one.

[MoiMagnus]

I've read many of these kind of arguments, but isn't that the same as saying "you can't play those races"? If you are gonna be a werewolf without the immunity to non silvered weapons, or a troll without regeneration, then you aren't either of those creatures, then why jump hoops to basically say you can't play them? Just say you can't and be done with it.

It depends on why the player want to play those races. For some peoples, they might as well not be playing those race. For others, they'd gladly take this compromise.

You're a werewolf without the immunity to non silvered weapons? You still have some interesting narrative hooks linked to the full moon. You still have some animalistic vibes and bond with wolves. And you have some character goals like "no longer being a wereworlf" or at the contrary "becomming a fully fledge werewolf" that can guide some personnal quests. Is that enough for you? Well, it depends. Why did you want to be a werwolf in the first place?

A lot of players are not particularly attached to the D&D lore. If they want to play a werewolf, they might not want specifically the "standard D&D werewolf" and just care about being something that they can call werewolf and has enough shared features with their mental image of a werewolf (which might have been influenced by modern fiction like Twilight or whatever).

[Unoriginal]

Would anyone here be fine if, in a group of 5 players and a DM, four of the players had standard 6th level PCs and the fifth player had the Archdevil Moloch, exiled Duke of the Nine Hells as their PC?

[Bobthewizard]

Because D&D is a game, there's an understanding that it should be balanced. However, this is often at odds with classic fantasy tropes which often include characters, both good and evil, with wildly different power levels. We're told that PCs should be balanced against one another, and yet in the Hobbit we see a large gap in power between the dwarves and Gandalf, and between Bilbo and the dwarves...

Then there's lycanthropy, with its BPS immunity. This fits with a lot of classic folklore for werewolves, but it's not always included in fantasy depictions of lycanthropes. But D&D has already established that this is something lycanthropes have, so of course a PC who becomes a lycanthrope will also have it. But it's considered to be too powerful, so the rules pretty much say that a PC who becomes a lycanthrope becomes an NPC...

A hypothetical example is regeneration, for example, with a playable troll or half-troll race. You can't be a troll and not have regeneration. But it would simply be too strong for a PC race. So what do you do if you're making a playable troll or half-troll race?...

I think all of those are playable from a role-playing standpoint. You could make a shifter and fluff them as a werewolf, or a Goliath or orc and fluff them as a troll. Make them a barbarian with a high CON and fluff all those HP as resistance to BPS damage or regeneration. You don't need the mechanical D&D benefit to role-play something and meet a literature trope.

As far as a dragon, make a winged tiefling, with fire resistance, and call them a dragon. Again, mechanical benefits are not required to make whatever you want. Warlock works well with this, reflavoring eldritch blast as a breath weapon.

As far as balance, I think it is important. Not everyone needs to be good at combat, but if you make a dwarf fighter, you don't want to be overshadowed in combat because the DM let someone else play dragon.

You are asking for imbalance on the upside, but would you be ok playing the dwarf fighter in a party of Gandalf, a regenerating troll, a BPS immune werewolf, and a full dragon? If you wouldn't want to play that dwarf, I don't think you should make the full mechanical version of the others.

[JackPhoenix]

These are all things that need to be programmed & thus are expected. It's hard to see how


Get in the castle by killing the guard = not player agency.
Get in the castle by modify memory on guard = player agency

Oppositely, I'd argue the determining factor is the importance of the challenge.

Player's agency is the ability to choose what you'll do to achieve your goal, and ideally, have different outcome depending on your choice. If your only choice is to kill the guards to progress in the game, there's no agency. If you have the option to pick if you want to fight the guards, charm them with magic, sneak in, fulfill a quest to be let in or ignore the castle entirely, with different rewards or impact on the story for each choice, that's player agency, even if you're still only limited to what the programmer intended (or maybe not, if you can find an exploit that get you result without going through the intended route). The relative difficulty of each option has nothing to do with it (though it can influence what option will the player pick depending on the character).

The popular term used in CRPG marketing is "choices and consequences."


I think all of those are playable from a role-playing standpoint. You could make a shifter and fluff them as a werewolf, or a Goliath or orc and fluff them as a troll. Make them a barbarian with a high CON and fluff all those HP as resistance to BPS damage or regeneration. You don't need the mechanical D&D benefit to role-play something and meet a literature trope.

As far as a dragon, make a winged tiefling, with fire resistance, and call them a dragon. Again, mechanical benefits are not required to make whatever you want. Warlock works well with this, reflavoring eldritch blast as a breath weapon.

That works only until the moment you meet an actual werewolf or a dragon, and wonder why the real werewolf is immune to non-silvered sword all the time while you're only resistant for 2 minutes a day (and somehow resist silver too), or why your "breath weapon" isn't AoE, you can still be burned and have fraction of dragon's ability in general.


As far as balance, I think it is important. Not everyone needs to be good at combat, but if you make a dwarf fighter, you don't want to be overshadowed in combat because the DM let someone else play dragon.

You are asking for imbalance on the upside, but would you be ok playing the dwarf fighter in a party of Gandalf, a regenerating troll, a BPS immune werewolf, and a full dragon? If you wouldn't want to play that dwarf, I don't think you should make the full mechanical version of the others.

No, but not because of the balance, but because I don't know why would such a party exist in the first place. I wouldn't want to play Gandalf, the troll, the werewolf or the dragon either.

[Warder]

Would anyone here be fine if, in a group of 5 players and a DM, four of the players had standard 6th level PCs and the fifth player had the Archdevil Moloch, exiled Duke of the Nine Hells as their PC?

I know you mean for that to be a rhetorical question, but quite honestly yes I would - if that's the game everyone agreed to play. Like, it's obviously not the standard way to play, and it obviously wouldn't make sense for starting up Storm King's Thunder or whatever, but if the DM has a special thing in mind that required one of the player to take the role of a non-standard PC, then why not? I'd assume session zero of that campaign would involve a discussion about how things would play out and ways to make sure everyone felt included and enjoy themselves.

I mean, an Archdevil is an extreme example, so it'd be difficult. Most real examples would probably not be as extreme, and I think you lose out on a lot of potentially amazing scenarios if you shut the door entirely on disproportionate power in a party. It's best to just talk about it.

[Unoriginal]

I know you mean for that to be a rhetorical question, but quite honestly yes I would - if that's the game everyone agreed to play. Like, it's obviously not the standard way to play, and it obviously wouldn't make sense for starting up Storm King's Thunder or whatever, but if the DM has a special thing in mind that required one of the player to take the role of a non-standard PC, then why not? I'd assume session zero of that campaign would involve a discussion about how things would play out and ways to make sure everyone felt included and enjoy themselves.

I mean, an Archdevil is an extreme example, so it'd be difficult. Most real examples would probably not be as extreme, and I think you lose out on a lot of potentially amazing scenarios if you shut the door entirely on disproportionate power in a party. It's best to just talk about it.

I was actually curious to see if people would answer by the alternative.

And I think we are in agreement. An adventure where one of the PCs is massively more powerful than the others can work and be fun... but it cannot be a "normal" adventure, it has to be tailor-made for this plot and people need to specifically agree to it.

I personally think adventuring with Moloch could be an awesome and unique experience, but it's because of said uniqueness that the system can't devote pages upon pages to try to make "this PC is much stronger" work as a general assumption of the system, usable with any published adventure.

[Warder]

I was actually curious to see if people would answer by the alternative.

And I think we are in agreement. An adventure where one of the PCs is massively more powerful than the others can work and be fun... but it cannot be a "normal" adventure, it has to be tailor-made for this plot and people need to specifically agree to it.

I personally think adventuring with Moloch could be an awesome and unique experience, but it's because of said uniqueness that the system can't devote pages upon pages to try to make "this PC is much stronger" work as a general assumption of the system, usable with any published adventure.

Haha well, sorry for the assumption, I really shouldn't have! And yes I agree with all of those things. However, and I can't stress this highly enough - considering Tasha's devoted 22 pages (?), 10% of the total book, to easily googleable puzzles that are one and done, I don't exactly see a few pages of guidance for stuff like this as such a huge deal in the long run.

This entire discussion is very interesting to me, though - when I primarily played 5e I was planning out a homebrew compendium for the Ultima universe in which one of the character classes is Shepherd, which was always (intentionally) weaker than the others. I thought a lot about how to plot out the class to make it feel as satisfying to play as any other class but with a markedly lower power curve. It was difficult to even enlist help in that, people I talked to about it tended to stop at "why?" and never let it go, hehe.

[Greywander]

I was actually curious to see if people would answer by the alternative.

And I think we are in agreement. An adventure where one of the PCs is massively more powerful than the others can work and be fun... but it cannot be a "normal" adventure, it has to be tailor-made for this plot and people need to specifically agree to it.

I personally think adventuring with Moloch could be an awesome and unique experience, but it's because of said uniqueness that the system can't devote pages upon pages to try to make "this PC is much stronger" work as a general assumption of the system, usable with any published adventure.
This is true, I think it works best if the default assumption is that PCs are balanced. Any deviation from that is just that: a deviation. I think a rulebook could afford to devote a few pages to this topic, however, noting that that it's an option but not the default. It's not a general assumption, but rather a noted exception. It just seems like such exceptions are barely touched on, if they are mentioned at all, except in systems specifically designed so that it is a general assumption (e.g. Exalted, where a each type of Exalted has wildly different power levels e.g. Solars vs. Sidereals, so any mixed group is going to be this).

[MoiMagnus]

Would anyone here be fine if, in a group of 5 players and a DM, four of the players had standard 6th level PCs and the fifth player had the Archdevil Moloch, exiled Duke of the Nine Hells as their PC?

If the GM is able to create a campaign interesting for everyone, sure. In particular, I'd fully believe in my GM being able to pull that off for a one-shot. I'd consider doing so for a full campaign "highly experimental" since I don't think the D&D rules are adapted to it.

One way that would make it work is the following: Any fight in which the Archdevil is part of is considered "easily won" by the PCs, and simply narrated by the Archdevil's player together the GM in a "Mother may I" way. Fights in which the Archdevil is busy somewhere else are the only ones that actually are played (and that was part of the deal that the Archdevil's player had accepted during session 0). Eventually, the PCs would catch up with the Archdevil, and there will be an awkward phase where the PCs are comparable but weaker than the Archdevil, which is maybe a good place for a timeskip with some free level ups. Then the finale has the PCs and the Archdevil being roughly at the same strength and fighting together.

I've played a good number of RPGs where one of the player was the king/queen of the realm. As long as the king/queen's player is nice enough, that can work quite well.

[Rukelnikov]

But what makes combat different? Especially as you bring CRPGs into this: Everything you can do can be considered to be "expected". To quote your list:


Now, teleporting people around, raising the dead king, dominating/charming/modifying the memories of NPCs, creating fortresses/landmasses/planes, those kind of things, if acknlowedged in world, are sources of palpable player agency.

These are all things that need to be programmed & thus are expected. It's hard to see how


Get in the castle by killing the guard = not player agency.
Get in the castle by modify memory on guard = player agency

Obviously in a CRPG agency is limited by whats in the game, asside from modding, you cant go beyond what the devs have written, I brought that example because I thought you had a point when you said maybe I don't value combat.

But since you asked, both those things have the same end result, get in the castle, thus there is no difference in agency there, in both cases you entered the castle. When thinking about agency think of the end result, what has changed in the setting? in your example the change was "the PC or party is now inside the castle", Modify Memory could have the effect of "the king now doesn't remember that he has a secret vault". This end result may be achieved thru other means, but it's unlikely it can be achieved thru combat.


Oppositely, I'd argue the determining factor is the importance of the challenge.

If you feel useless during a challenge that is not important (or that you don't find important), that's not going to have a big impact on how you feel your agency is infuenced.
If you feel useless during a challenge that is important (or that you feel to be important), that is going to have a big impact on how you feel your agency is infuenced.

But this is indepentant wether a challenge is a combat or non-combat one.

Again, even if I'm an unstoppable killing machine and destroy hordes of enemies, as long as im constrained to a script I don't have agency at all. How my character fares in the script is irrelevant to the fact that he's following one.


It depends on why the player want to play those races. For some peoples, they might as well not be playing those race. For others, they'd gladly take this compromise.

You're a werewolf without the immunity to non silvered weapons? You still have some interesting narrative hooks linked to the full moon. You still have some animalistic vibes and bond with wolves. And you have some character goals like "no longer being a wereworlf" or at the contrary "becomming a fully fledge werewolf" that can guide some personnal quests. Is that enough for you? Well, it depends. Why did you want to be a werwolf in the first place?

A lot of players are not particularly attached to the D&D lore. If they want to play a werewolf, they might not want specifically the "standard D&D werewolf" and just care about being something that they can call werewolf and has enough shared features with their mental image of a werewolf (which might have been influenced by modern fiction like Twilight or whatever).

Well, but in this case the player is wanting to play his idea of a Werewolf, not an in setting Werewolf. If the werewolves of the setting are not immune to non-silvered weapons, I wouldn't want to have that trait, since no werewolf has it, but always being forced to be a unique specimen of X race, instead of being allowed to actually be a memeber of X race is what kills the illusion for me.


Would anyone here be fine if, in a group of 5 players and a DM, four of the players had standard 6th level PCs and the fifth player had the Archdevil Moloch, exiled Duke of the Nine Hells as their PC?

Not as extreme in dnd but I've played in a aprty of 4 level 3-5 and a lvl 12 char, it was in 2e though. In WoD we did play a party of 3 8th gen vamps, 1 7th and 1 5th, the difference in power with the 5th was extremely noticeable, he could likely have soloed the entire party by himself. In both cases I was part of the low level chars, and both adventures had a shonen feeling where it was noticeable how we were catching up to the high levels.

I've not played but DMed an adventure in 3e that went from 1st to 20s with 6-8 players in which by level 3 one of the PCs got divine rank 0 and ended at DR3, to this day its still one the campaigns I've DMed that my friends remember most fondly.

As long as the adventure is entertaining and the "low level" characters can get to do stuff, its fine, the high level will fight the Orc leader while we hold off his minions so he can get the job done. I don't mind

[Psyren]

Or consider the new yuan-ti, which have their poison immunity downgraded to a resistance and lose their Magic Resistance. Why do NPCs get to keep these traits, but my PC does not? (This one really bothers me. I'd understand if it was a learned ability, but it feels wrong for an innate trait to be nerfed or simply missing from a playable version of that creature.)

So here's the thing: the designers' job is to make a baseline for the game that gets used and enjoyed by most of their audience. Individual groups don't have to stick to that baseline; your DM can let you be a "True/Pureblood Yuan-ti" with full immunity and universal magic resistance if you all want that. But trying to force that on every group through the published books just led to a lot of groups banning the race entirely (I seem to recall YPB was the most banned race in the game at one point), which meant it was largely a waste of design resources as originally printed; they may as well have devoted that time and iteration to making something else. Engagement and acceptance are their primary goals, not fidelity to traditional lore.

We're seeing the same thing happen with the Kender, where their established fluff and mechanics are being altered to make them better to play alongside even if they're not as "lore accurate." When the two clash, gameplay should always defeat tradition in my view.


Then there's lycanthropy, with its BPS immunity. This fits with a lot of classic folklore for werewolves, but it's not always included in fantasy depictions of lycanthropes. But D&D has already established that this is something lycanthropes have, so of course a PC who becomes a lycanthrope will also have it. But it's considered to be too powerful, so the rules pretty much say that a PC who becomes a lycanthrope becomes an NPC.

This is another instance where setting the default doesn't mean your table has to follow it. If your group is comfortable with lycanthropes being PC-controlled, go for it! But by setting the default expectation that you lose control of your character, DMs are empowered to control


A hypothetical example is regeneration, for example, with a playable troll or half-troll race. You can't be a troll and not have regeneration. But it would simply be too strong for a PC race. So what do you do if you're making a playable troll or half-troll race?

"Insert self-healing ability that works like {scaling spell} here, usable PB/LR or X/SR." Maybe let it be usable even if the PC is incapacitated or dying if you want to get spicy.


But perhaps the most quintessential example is the playable dragon. Because who hasn't wanted to play as a dragon at some point? Now, between the Dragon monk and the Dragon sorcerer, you can actually get surprising close using just RAW and refluffing some stuff, but that's not really the same as playing an actual, literal dragon, with the dragon stat block and everything. But of course this would be far too strong for a player.

It just strikes me that the pursuit of "balance" might be a fruitless one. We want things to be balanced, but we also want them to be lore-accurate. We can just make anything that's not balanced unavailable to the players, but that's going to mean cutting out a lot of options, and people want to play as some of these other creatures and monsters. Or I guess we could just make every creature equally as strong as a human, but a that point they might as well just be human, and is that even fantasy anymore? It feels like we're left with the perhaps-impossible task of walking the fine line between mechanically balanced and lore accurate, and I think trying to maintain both at the same time will only lead to problems.

Instead, what makes sense to me would be to organize playable races/etc. by power level. So if you want a game with standard balance, here are your list of playable races. If you think you can handle asymmetric balance, then you can broaden your options to include other things. I think it's entirely possible to have a campaign with a dragon, a werewolf, and a goblin as PCs; each are strong at certain things, but weak to others. A campaign centered mostly around political intrigue will largely waste the powerful abilities of dragons and lycanthropes. Even in a combat-heavy campaign you can still mix in other things so that each player has a job to do that the others can't. Gandalf is constantly busy and can't always bail the dwarves out, and there are things that only Bilbo is equipped to handle.

I guess all this to say that maybe we shouldn't obsess so much over balance, and stop to consider how it might be possible to run an asymmetrically balanced campaign. Balance is, of course, still important and desirable, it just isn't always realistically achievable, and sometimes it might be better to allow something that isn't balanced instead of trying to make it balanced.

(I'm not saying you need to let your players play as trolls or dragons or whatever, what I'm saying is if you do let a player play as a troll, they need to have regeneration. If you nerf it into oblivion, then they're not really playing a troll anymore. Either commit to the asymmetry, or restrict the game to only balanced options. The other thing I'm saying is that it can still be fun to play an asymmetric game, and that it's more in line with classic fantasy tropes. Enforced balance can make it feel too much like a game and not enough like fantasy.)

How I kind of wish the MM was set up, and I understand this would have been a lot more work, is for each monster or group of monsters to consist of a monster race and a monster class. For example, a goblin race, which defines the base abilities that all goblins have. Then you have a goblin class, allowing you to create goblin NPCs with various levels/CRs, and different subclasses for different types of goblins. Not only does this allow some customization when it comes to monsters, but it would be trivial to allow a PC to play as a monster race, and possibly take monster class levels to get some of the stronger abilities that not every monster of that type has, only the stronger ones have. Vampire spawn don't get some of the abilities that a vampire lord does, so you might need to put enough levels into the vampire class to get some of those abilities.

The decision to let the player be a "true dragon", "something dragon-flavored that is in line with other PC races", or anything in between that spectrum should always be in the hands of the DM. And by having the "default answer" to anything above that second category be no, the books are doing that. They are not creating an unreasonable expectation in the minds of the players and providing DMs with covering fire to not appear draconian (natch) themselves. This is as it should be, working as intended.

[Pex]

So here's the thing: the designers' job is to make a baseline for the game that gets used and enjoyed by most of their audience. Individual groups don't have to stick to that baseline;

Now where have I heard that idea before?

[qube]

Would anyone here be fine if, in a group of 5 players and a DM, four of the players had standard 6th level PCs and the fifth player had the Archdevil Moloch, exiled Duke of the Nine Hells as their PC?
I am currently playing in an assymetric one-shot - but only because it's by design : it's a solo side quest of one of the PCs, all other players basicaly play NPCs. But we're still useful (power wise, the PC is stronger, but not twice as strong). Getting overshadowed by the PC basically is by design.

But Moloch is CR 21. Just imagine Moloch & one of the lvl 6 players both want to play frontliner. You'll need some epic DM to keep encounters from feeling artifical and both players feeling useful.


When thinking about agency think of the end result, what has changed in the setting? in your example the change was "the PC or party is now inside the castle", Modify Memory could have the effect of "the king now doesn't remember that he has a secret vault". This end result may be achieved thru other means, but it's unlikely it can be achieved thru combat.
And yet, consider we're talking combat vs non-combat - not who is targetted. If you target the king, would you not agree that killing the king might in fact have bigger effect on the setting, then stealing a bit of his gold?

Your guideline seems to be "ability to not to follow the plot & do something on your own" -- yet, this has no bearing on combat vs non-combat.

Even more, it's contrairy to your initial claim: "being better in combat doesn't amount to greater player agency." Because stronger characters

might have more options. (a lvl 8 wiz can't cast modify memory, a lvl 9 wiz can /// or equal level spellcasters, but one has optimized stats & spell list)
are more equiped to deal with the consequences of your actions (guards, bounty hunters, ...) - and thus you have more freedom to do what you want.
if all things are equal except for combat capability it, factually, is the character who's better at combat who has more (realistic) choices.

[Psyren]

Now where have I heard that idea before?

Probably from me since I've pointed this out before on this board. Beyond that, no clue what you're getting at :smallconfused:

[Tanarii]

Maybe our dfinitions of "player agency" are different, to me it means the ability of the player to impact on the setting or story, usually thru their PC (in dnd its almost exclusively thru their PC, but that's not always the case in other systems). So getting the spotlight, or being irrelevant in a fight have no weight in terms of how much agency a given player has.
Ability of the player to impact the setting or "story" also has no guaranteed weight in terms of how much agency a given player has. So that definition is functionally useless.

Player agency is the ability to make meaningful choices with separate consequences.

A player can very easily impact the setting or story without being able to make any meaningful choices. That's why the term railroad exists, along with illusionism. They demonstrate exactly how the player can have little to zero agency and their actions still having a huge impact on "story" and setting.

[clash]

I'm actually planning on running a similar idea soon but it will be spilt by level, not class or race. Half of the party will be continuing characters from the previous campaign as teachers and the other half will be students and level up twice as fast. By the end of the campaign the goal is to have them at the same level but I think it is manageable to provide different threat levels and challenges specifically targeted to different members of the party giving them all agency. I do think this is only possibly as the exception to the rule. A campaign has to be built for it and it wouldn't work with adventure modules but to be honest I think most of the official campaigns are a pain anyways and more work than creating your own world.

[Telok]

But Moloch is CR 21. Just imagine Moloch & one of the lvl 6 players both want to play frontliner. You'll need some epic DM to keep encounters from feeling artifical and both players feeling useful.

Or start with a "young" or cursed-with-debuff one. Not exactly new, happened in OD&D.


Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee (p. 8).