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Dec 18, 2012 -- 8:17PM, penandpaper2 wrote:

Dec 18, 2012 -- 6:39PM, GEBELL wrote:

Dec 18, 2012 -- 5:44PM, penandpaper2 wrote:

I suggest they not try to balance the classes so much.  And if they insist on balancing them, make the wizards weak as hell the first 6 levels.  Make the fighters much stronger than them.  Then have the roles reversed in the later levels.  This way it forces people to play as a group, not the "look at me and how great I am show."

I mean did you see the thread started on the new packet?  Apparently, every class is ruined or boring or needs to do everything every other class does plus more.  All skills and feats are pointless, overpowered, or underpowered.  And best of all, the (direct quote here) "magic items are like homework."  



 

I think relative class balance is important for the game (as in attracting and keeping players).  It is very frustrating as a DM to have player balance imbalance.  It makes it difficult to understand challenge difficulty and to keep the players having fun at the table. 

You don't want some players feeling bored and frustrated for 6 levels (especially because if that's the case the game won't last that long as people quit) - and the DM will struggle to create stories that keep people engaged even where there is huge imbalance.

Also, I can't imagine the nightmare of balancing challenge difficulty without some sembelance of character balance.  What's a challenging encounter for 5 10th level characters suddenly depends on class makeup, and that class makeup effect changes for each and every level. 
D&D Next can't be a game that's only playable by DMs with years and years of experience. 

I would like to point out that 4e, which is probably the most class "balanced" out of all editions, has incredible disparity.  Have one player min/max a ranger or other striker, and then have another player try to play a concept druid.  Have you ever seen that?  I have, and it is not balanced.  Get them up to 8th level, then the gap grows as wide as a canyon.  But you know what?  It was still fun and both players enjoyed their characters.

I would be curious if others have had that experience or if all players at the table had to be balanced in order for the game to be fun. 

How are you saying the two characters are unbalanced? Based on their DPR? Like, of course the optimized striker us dealing more damaging and killing things better than the Druid; an unoptimized one would be doing the same. But put in a situation where control powers are needed (several monsters that outclass the party, massive about of minions, powerful ranged enemies) the Druid is going to shine, unless you outright nerfed the character.

To get slightly back on topic:

My group doesn't generally allow actions that aren't codified by rules.  Houseruling in itself is an absolute no-go.  Therefore, playing mother may I with the DM for flavorful and interesting actions not presented in the rules is an an absolute impossibility.  Even if it were allowed in my group, effectiveness would be determined on how thorough the explanation of the surroundings is and how creative the player can be.  I feel it's not a good means of balancing characters.

Except that in earlier editions you didn't need to min/max at all for a caster to outshine a figher or a rogue.  The Caster could do the fighter and the rogues jobs for them and still have the magical resources to do the more classically wizardly things without any sort of optimization.

What you seem to be forgetting is that we had to fight tooth and nail to get to the acceptable balance of 4e. 

Actually, I think the extra actions for improv are a great idea.  Certainly I like it better than having to learn maneuvers to do anything interesting in combat, as that just brings us back to looking at our character sheets instead of our creativity and our minds' eye view of the battlefield.  I prefer the extra action that does not do damage to giving up your weapon damage but adding your MDD/B too, expalin to me how pulling a rug out from under the goblins does 41 points of damage, even if you're 20th level?  I think a table somewhere in the PHB (not the DMG, stupid page 42 being in the wrong book so nobody used it) that listed various effects you could accomplish with various ability checks, in a "guidelines/suggestions, you must come up with an in-world explanation for why this is working and may do other things if they make sense" sort of way, would really help the DM may I bit a lot of people complain about.  The hard part would be balancing out the monsters when the martials are throwing around so much control.  Opposed rolls are a joke, and if the fighter is constantly proning/blinding everything in sight while the rogue is constantly taunting/feinting/etc then the monsters are never going to get a chance to act.  Any ideas?  Maybe off-action improvs suffer disadvantage, so at least you'll only succeed like 60% of the time instead of 80?  Not enough...

Will save vs condescending, balance misunderstanding, edition warring trolls: passed. 

Dec 19, 2012 -- 5:38AM, powerroleplayer wrote:

I prefer the extra action that does not do damage to giving up your weapon damage but adding your MDD/B too, expalin to me how pulling a rug out from under the goblins does 41 points of damage, even if you're 20th level?

I guess the assumption for those using martial damage dice with a stunt, is that if successful you are doing more than just tripping a bunch of goblins by pulling a rug out from underneath them, like pulling the rug with one hand while attacking with your sword, or that 6d6 damage spread across 4 or 5 goblins is ony 1d6 or so per gobling, which isn't as ridiculous for the maximum of human potential.

But your concern does make a good case for making stunts an extra action or effect that you can perform in addition to a weapon attack. I like the idea of a weapon not being required (the swinging on a chandeliere trick), but it's not crazy at all to want a weapon or some other attack to be required to damage as well, and the chandeliere trick works equally well as an unarmed attack in addition to a stunt.

As for the imbalanced difficulty of opposed checks or saves, I agree, something needs to be done. But save DCs are one of my biggest complaints about the math of the game. A 20th level wizard will have a save DC of 20 as well, I don't think that's a good thing at all. But I guess if the wizard has a DC 20 save, it's not terrible to make it equally difficult to avoid being blinded for a round because the fighter has knocked your helm askew, or not fall when that 20th level kicks your feet out from under you after knocking you over the head with a mace. I hope feedback will highlight these issues to the designers, but who knows, perhaps most people don't care.