Interesting. Got to watch the "Power Creep" episode, but this one is something that we really should take note of in D&D.
To put it simply, it seems that the better way of going about developing D&D isn't to give everyone with the same abilities or what not, it's basically to
* define a baseline average that everyone is subject to * provide classes with advantages at certain aspects or instances, but can NEVER be great at EVERYTHING * create the game in such a way that there are so many real options that we can spend decades building what might be considered "best" in certain categories, yet nothing to the scale of 3.5E's "Big 5", which basically devolved the game for "a spell for most (if not all) seasons", including scrap-the-spell-immunity, ignore-the-anti-magic-field, no-such-thing-as-saves, etc.
I'm thinking 4E actually got *pretty* close to this, because * it has ALWAYS been clear to everyone that there was this sort of mathematical baseline in the system -- especially in the DPR and accuracy sections -- that everyone was able to use * while there has been several clear-cut winners in terms of condition-inflicting (more of an issue with how Stun, Daze and "until the end of your next turn" were almost universally better than Slow or "save ends"), in terms of overall power development, the ONLY real comparable things were accuracy and damage. * casters were still superior to non-casters, but not in every way. It's very difficult to find casters that pumped out more damage than non-casters, it's fairly difficult to create a non-caster that inflicts as many types of conditions as a caster, etc.
They failed in the presentation, yes. But the underlying system was balanced *enough*, and not perfectly balanced.
Unless someone can show me a 4E Fighter who, at level 30, can cause a one mile radius slab of land to permanently stay afloat without having to resort to the same ritual that the 4E Wizard used to do it.
In fact, in that very video, Wizards of the Coast was mentioned as using what is mentioned to be the "Jedi Curve". This curve was a mathematical formula for the exact progression of a ability-less, colorless card in a given mana-to-power ratio. All other cards would then deviate from this progression by 10%-15%.
Even though it was applied to TCGs and PvP-oriented play, the concepts should still be able to trickle down to TRPGs especially because we *are* talking about a game that offers choices. If there is no baseline, you end up with a wildly swingy game that is downright broken and requires a high level of System Mastery(c) before you can even *try* experimenting. If there is a baseline, you can adequately diverge from that and allow everyone to meaningfully contribute while showing how some classes are outright better than others in a given situation.
Putting it -- and incomparables -- into perspective, a Wizard might have a variety of spells that can help in a variety of situations, but those spells are needed by the Wizard to keep within the baseline, and their main "shtick" would involve being able to contribute to a scenario in a way that cannot be compared to a Fighter, Cleric or Rogue. A healer-less environment would be tolerable, but improving survivability by having a Cleric on-board can be a bigger boon. A Fighter-less party might be fine, but the deadliness of the Fighter is what would give the party an offense-oriented edge. Without the Rogues you could have alternatives in opening doors and dealing with traps, but Rogues would give the party an edge.
So you could have a Bard that is the best conversationalist, but he isn't so far off the map that an adequately trained or skilled Fighter isn't going to stop mid-speech and say "wait, I'll have the Face here do the talking because he has a higher bonus than me". You could have a Cleric that is the best healer, but not so much better that a Paladin or a Warlord can't go in and replace him when it comes to healing. You could have a Wizard that is the best in dictating the flow of battle with his world-altering spells, but not so much better that a couple of warriors -- each with his own specializations -- can coordinate to produce almost the same effect.
"But it wouldn't be D&D! It would be too balanced!", you might say. If being D&D means having to put up with broken mechanics, then I'll be looking elsewhere for my TRPG fix. I'm not asking for perfect balance, I'm asking for REASONABLE balance... for perfect imbalance. Some options, classes, themesspecializations, and other game elements would be better for some situations, while others would be better for other situations, but none would be best for all situations**.
"But it wouldn't be roleplaying! It would be too mechanical!", you might say. But last I checked, D&D was a roleplaying GAME, and should cater to both ROLEPLAYING -- which should be fairly rules-light, save perhaps for elements that can alter the story... like magic [if you're into that] -- and GAME (where most of the metagaming occurs anyway). The developers should keep both in mind: no matter how well-fluffed the game is, if the mechanics falter, there is no game... and no matter how well-developed the mechanics are, if the fanbase's imagination is not caught, even if you have tons more written fluff than any edition prior to this, none of it will fly***.
Long story short: what Mike Mearls said before that feel should come before mechanics? Absolute crap if you ask me.
Math is an inconvenient fact of life, but it is one of two things that powers tabletop roleplaying games in general. The second thing being the overall atmosphere generated by the campaign setting and the people involved in the game, especially the DM.
** heck, it would probably make even the crappiest options like Toughness actually viable *** the biggest problem with 4E has always been presentation IMHO
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
Gah. I knew the moment this Extra Credits video dropped it was going to be misused like this.
I don't dispute the EC folks' arguments...for video games. But I think there are some major problems in just porting the idea over to tabletop rpgs.
Tabletop games are printed media. Which means each printing of the rules is a snapshot in time, and once the rules are out there, you can't go back under the hood to fix things easily. Instead you have to come out with ever-increasing errata, splatbooks, and other additional material, which makes the game more unweildy; moreover, all of this takes much more time. You can't just whip up a new patch - it takes months to write it all up, print it, distribute it, and you have no way of knowing whether there's going to be takeup on the player side. Thus, the cyclical balance that they were talking about at 4:30 doesn't really work well with this medium. The perfect example of this is what happened when Tome of Battle landed as an attempt to introduce cyclical balance between martial and magical classes - instead of prompting everyone to think up new strategies, a significant part of the player base refused to accept the new ruleset because it changed something they had gotten used to; same thing happened with 4e.
Not all metagames are good for that genre of game. You'll note that the examples used in the video are all competitive games, and none of them are RPG games where you build up a character over many levels. That makes perfect imbalance and cyclical balance more appropriate - they work great for Magic the Gathering because MtG is a collectible card game where the designers want players to be constantly chasing new cards and new strategies. They don't work as well for cooperative games where players develop their characters over time; changes in balance devalues the time players have put into their characters, and one player shining doesn't spur on the other to beat the new strategy, instead it just makes them more ancillary to the game.
Perfect imbalance requires a lot of work to get right. 3.X in many ways got it really wrong; the imbalance was way too big, it rewarded those with "system mastery" (i.e, time invested/skill in the metagame) way too much and really penalized those without, and more importantly, the imbalance significantly limited the utility of too large areas of the game. If MtG comes out with a new set of cards that change how part of the game works, it's not a huge problem because your deck relies on many different parts of the game work - but if D&D's "system mastery" invalidates lower tier classes, you can't play these classes anymore, and your whole game is that class.
I believe that the thing you are calling "perfect imbalance" is pretty much what everyone else means when they say they want "balance."
Exactly. It's kinda why I find claims that 4E is perfectly balanced and bland rather ridiculous, when clearly the Wizard is up and out of the ballpark in terms of utilitarian potential, and yet he is nowhere near the overpoweredness of 3.5E where he can easily snuff out encounters that don't have your standard issue anti-caster array (because even with all those gamebreaking spells available, they take so long to cast it's easier to just get others to do their thing while the wizard does his thing and be done with it if it is still reasonably possible, then wait for the wizard to finish if there isn't much of an alternative left). Even in the most broken areas of 4E (epic tier, which technically should be broken powerful for everyone anyway), the power gap between level 1 and level 21 characters is noticeable and yet nowhere near the gap between a fighter and a wizard of the same level pre-4E.
And I think that's where a lot of the friction is: some people WANT to have imbalances within the same level, even if it means outright ignoring the very function of level. And even if SOME imbalance is fine, it seems that these people want the sort of imbalance that makes a level 20 kobold only barely comparable to a level 12 Lich... which begs to ask, "what's the use of levels and progression, if creatures of the same level are so varied in comparable power that clear winners in virtually every aspect are visible and REQUIRES the DM to neuter them in order to restore even a semblance of comparability?"
Some people do realize that level is a relative measure of creature capability, that higher level creatures have increased capability over lesser level creatures... kinda like how a person who chose to physically train regularly for two years would have a significant physical improvement in the same way a person who chose to study (mentally train) regularly for the same amount of time would have a significant improvement in the field of knowledge associated with his studies. They're imbalanced in that they are able to do things that the other guy can't, but they're balanced in that attempting to compare one with the other is comparing apples to oranges, yet at the same time they are roughly equally rewarded for the effort they placed in their character.
- - - - - If I were to implement Bounded Accuracy, I'd likely have * levels 1-2 for "system/game introduction", with everyone having the simplest options and there's a reasonable baseline of comparison, upon which the fighter does a TAD better in the area of combat, the rogue does a LITTLE better in utilitarian aspects -- depending on expertise focus, with Sneak Attack as a means to keep within the baseline comparison -- the cleric doing SOMEWHAT better in the defensive support aspects (buffing, healing, sometimes utilitarian aspects) and spell-based anti-undead (not overwhelmingly better, just noticeably better), and the wizard being relatively inferior without his spells, and needing his spells to keep within the baseline. * levels 3-5 for "establishing himself in the world", with everyone's general field of specialization being much more recognizable, but all of which are still roughly within 10%-15% of each other in terms of being able to contribute in a given scenario * levels 6-10 for "living the adventuring spirit", with everyone given the option to further specialize, bringing them roughly 15%-20% better than others in particular situations * levels 11-15 for "best of the best", with very clear-cut advantages being seen for choosing one class over another, but only in particular situations, and even then there are in-game/in-story ways that might be possible to at least cover weaknesses should the class not be present (like how other classes could have their own unique shtick, yet compared to the baseline and the missing class, they are a reasonable "in-between" of sorts; not the best, but reasonable nevertheless... like how an Assassin might never be as great a Thief as a Thief, but they're still decent in hiding compared to the war-mongering Barbarian or Fighter) * levels 16-20+ for "building the legend", where complicated characters (not classes) have so many options available there's risk of bogging down but they STILL can't replace other classes UNLESS the DM goes out of his way to provide options that let him do so
[ Becoming a god or what not should be more of a quest thing than anything. ]
Then to make things more interesting AND in-line with the Bounded Accuracy concept, ALL parts of the system that progress -- hit points, damage, accuracy, etc. -- should scale almost negligibly (e.g. d4 & d6 HP classes get +1 HP every level, d8 & d10 HP classes get +2, d12 HP classes get +3). What you get when you level up would instead be in the form of * non-scaling, incomparable features (more expertise dice, more maneuvers, more spells [even if you don't have the spell slots to accommodate them; being a wizard does have this micromanagement mini-game going on, why not play with it?], equipment that grants non-scaling bonuses [enough with the +X already!], etc.) * exposure to an increasingly varied number of challenge types * greater influence in the world they are in (although this one might be best left to the DM)
Although frankly, for the sake of keeping everything within sane levels, I wouldn't mind if the max level of D&D Next was just level 15 instead of 20 or 30, leaving those upper levels as modules.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
While I'd love to watch the video before commenting on it, it won't load even after trying 2 different computers, 4 different browsers, and 3 different kinds of Flash.
That being said, I cannot support M:tG or MMO style "balance". Not only are they not balanced, they are not fun and serve no real purpose. M:tG frequently removes playstyles, not because they are imbalanced, but simply to sell more cards and create new playstyles. I'm not going to buy new books just to keep giving WotC money.
MMORPGs are simply not balanced at all. Mechanically, they intentionally support stat bloat, and their use of patching to appease every whim of the lowest common denominator of player further imbalances things. In fact, I'd argue the frequent patching common in many games these days is a sign of urine poor beta testing. Many games simply aren't tested well enough before they are released, and video game companies use tjeir early players as as beta testers.
Part of why we are here is to make sure cyclical balance doesn't happen.
Tabletop games are printed media. Which means each printing of the rules is a snapshot in time, and once the rules are out there, you can't go back under the hood to fix things easily. Instead you have to come out with ever-increasing errata, splatbooks, and other additional material, which makes the game more unweildy; moreover, all of this takes much more time. You can't just whip up a new patch - it takes months to write it all up, print it, distribute it, and you have no way of knowing whether there's going to be takeup on the player side. Thus, the cyclical balance that they were talking about at 4:30 doesn't really work well with this medium. The perfect example of this is what happened when Tome of Battle landed as an attempt to introduce cyclical balance between martial and magical classes - instead of prompting everyone to think up new strategies, a significant part of the player base refused to accept the new ruleset because it changed something they had gotten used to; same thing happened with 4e.
The playtest is a chance to do it RIGHT this time. People are pouring out their feedback well before the final release is to be sold on the market. Also, remember that even in a non-competitive environment, choice is still a relevant issue. Being underpowered or the laughing stock of the group is one thing, being easily overshadowed by another class is another.
Not all metagames are good for that genre of game. You'll note that the examples used in the video are all competitive games, and none of them are RPG games where you build up a character over many levels. That makes perfect imbalance and cyclical balance more appropriate - they work great for Magic the Gathering because MtG is a collectible card game where the designers want players to be constantly chasing new cards and new strategies. They don't work as well for cooperative games where players develop their characters over time; changes in balance devalues the time players have put into their characters, and one player shining doesn't spur on the other to beat the new strategy, instead it just makes them more ancillary to the game.
The point of the thread is not to encourage PvP and adapt a competitive stance in the exact same "imperfect balance" as detailed in the video. It is to highlight that the concept of "imperfect balance" should be considered with the development of the system: the premise that we will never have fighters that will 100% be able to replace wizards without violating the very concept of wizards and fighters... yet at the same time the wizards SHOULD respect the fighter design space, in the sense that fighters are there to fight, not carry their luggage.
Perfect imbalance requires a lot of work to get right. 3.X in many ways got it really wrong; the imbalance was way too big, it rewarded those with "system mastery" (i.e, time invested/skill in the metagame) way too much and really penalized those without, and more importantly, the imbalance significantly limited the utility of too large areas of the game. If MtG comes out with a new set of cards that change how part of the game works, it's not a huge problem because your deck relies on many different parts of the game work - but if D&D's "system mastery" invalidates lower tier classes, you can't play these classes anymore, and your whole game is that class.
4E seemed to get it right, more or less. All we need to do is tune it a bit better, while at the same time changing the format to appeal to prior editions and recapture whatever spirit of D&D was supposedly lost in the transition.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
While I'd love to watch the video before commenting on it, it won't load even after trying 2 different computers, 4 different browsers, and 3 different kinds of Flash.
That being said, I cannot support M:tG or MMO style "balance". Not only are they not balanced, they are not fun and serve no real purpose. M:tG frequently removes playstyles, not because they are imbalanced, but simply to sell more cards and create new playstyles. I'm not going to buy new books just to keep giving WotC money.
MMORPGs are simply not balanced at all. Mechanically, they intentionally support stat bloat, and their use of patching to appease every whim of the lowest common denominator of player further imbalances things. In fact, I'd argue the frequent patching common in many games these days is a sign of urine poor beta testing. Many games simply aren't tested well enough before they are released, and video game companies use tjeir early players as as beta testers.
Part of why we are here is to make sure cyclical balance doesn't happen.
Cyclical balance? Certainly, scrap that part. What I would rather go for is the sort of imbalance that is more applicable to D&D and even to TRPGs as a whole: the imbalance that acknowledges that some classes will do better in some fields than others, but no single class should be able to do everything better than anyone else, which was the single biggest problem 3.5E had with the "big 5", if the DM didn't go out of his way to neuter magic in general.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
One more thing touched upon by the video that is relevant to the discussion AND development of D&D Next would be "metagaming".
Now for some of us in the TRPG world, metagaming is a bad concept that should burn in a fire and buried deep in the ocean after that (and if it came back up, we burn it again!). It is one of the most hated things in TRPGing, as well as the most loved in TRPGs (hence the friction between "rollplayers" and "roleplayers"). Another term for it: min/maxing.
But what if min/maxing was taken into serious account by the developers, and instead of encouraging it like what Monte Cook did with 3E, brought down by a HUGE notch, to the point where no matter how much you metagame or min/max, you will never be so far off better than the casual gamer or the "roleplayer" that people would scorn your presence... or even if you *were* far superior to them, it would be in such a way that all your superiority would never really step on others UNLESS they took the exact same class? And wouldn't you, as a DM, want to work on your campaigns without having to add in adamantine planar anti-magic field protected castles JUST to avoid the metagame?
Wouldn't it be a good idea for the people you are going to pay good, hard-earned money with, to actually go out and deal with the metagame on your behalf?
The chance to have a game where you have a lot of *real* choices, the possibility of seeing handbook guides of the future with most (if not all) options within the "decent" and "situationally good" (black/purple), few "very good" (blue) and non-existent "you'd be crazy not to get it" (gold) and "trap options" (red) -- THAT is why I brought the "perfect imbalance" concept onto the table for discussion and consideration.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
But what if min/maxing was taken into serious account by the developers, and instead of encouraging it like what Monte Cook did with 3E, brought down by a HUGE notch, to the point where no matter how much you metagame or min/max, you will never be so far off better than the casual gamer or the "roleplayer" that people would scorn your presence... or even if you *were* far superior to them, it would be in such a way that all your superiority would never really step on others UNLESS they took the exact same class? And wouldn't you, as a DM, want to work on your campaigns without having to add in adamantine planar anti-magic field protected castles JUST to avoid the metagame?
I don't like when people respond to me like this, so I apologize for having to be a bit hypocritical when I respond like this: and what does that look like? You're describing something that designers probably already think about and struggle with. The struggle is that you're fighting human ingenuity (the capacity to minimize your weaknesses and maximize your strengths is a great example of why humans are so awesome). Any strike that I can think of that is codified and would dash the methods of a "rollplayer" is also going to stomp on everyone else whenever ingenuity is concerned; and this time around, it seems the designers are trying to put human ingenuity in the foreground.
So I dunno. Let's make this a constructive thread. Chaosfang, you're the OP; I giveth to you the speaking banana (so no one else gets to talk while he has the banana!). What do you think would weaken the potency of metagaming without hindering human ingenuity in a way that is detrimental to the experience?
I don't use emoticons, and I'm also pretty pleasant. So if I say something that's rude or insulting, it's probably a joke.
