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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 10:57AM
#1
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I am dying to know the answer to this question. I have watched flame wars erupt for the past year regarding wizard balance, fighter balance, healing balance, balance across the pillars, vancian balance, spell point balance, movement balance, defining balance, etc... There is probably a book worth of opinions here regarding balance. But, I have yet to hear (or remember) of any specific examples where it's ruined the game. So, as a DM for the past 25 years, I have probably, in my estimation run 200 - 300 games. I have played probably about the same or more. In those sessions, we've had a 2e game where our dwarven fighter had a belt of storm giant strength. I was the other fighter. I had a 16 strength. He had a 25. I used daggers. He used a battle-axe. He did roughly 4-5x my damage. We had a wizard that caste haste on him as well. Crazy! None of our games were ruined though. Maybe it was just a good group. I've played 4e games with a wonderful min/maxer (great RP too) who used every broken mechanic he could find for each and every character. In the beginning his wizard could fly and rain magic missiles like no other. They fixed that. Next, he moved on to a striker that at 7th level had a "to hit" that was 8-10 points above everyone else's. In both of these situations no one's game was ruined. Again, maybe these were like the last group, and just a rare group. I have seen disagreements about certain rules or the DM's interpretation of the rules. I think anytime you have a game where the rulebook is 300 pages that might happen.  But, I've only seen it once or twice ruin a player's game, and consequently, the group's game. These were rare occassions where I was at a convention playing with complete strangers. Other than that - none. So would some of you mind please detailing a time your game was ruined because of balance? Thanks.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:06AM
#2
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I've only had balance really come into play once, and it had nothing to do with Wizards. We had a 3.5 Psion in one group that was so powerful the rest of the group forced him to retire his character. It really wasn't even because his powers were THAT out of whack, but because if he decided to do something, there was nothing the rest of the party could do to stop it. He could dominate with a rediculous save, and was not exactly a huge team player.
Other than that, I've been playing D&D almost weekly since 3.0 came out in 2000, and that's the only time I've ever had issues with balance. Most people are team players and don't marginalize other group members. As well, spellcasters do have limited spell slots which usually got taken for damage spells over utility. Never has been a big issue in my groups, even up to our currently weekly Pathfinder game.
And don't say it's because we don't crunch the numbers. My group LOVES to make broken combinations of things. A couple of my players know the rules so well, I swear they can quote the Core Rulebook verbatim.
The Imbalance ruining games is caused by 2 things
1) Bad team players
2) Bad assumptions
My two copper.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:08AM
#3
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I've only had balance really come into play once, and it had nothing to do with Wizards. We had a 3.5 Psion in one group that was so powerful the rest of the group forced him to retire his character. It really wasn't even because his powers were THAT out of whack, but because if he decided to do something, there was nothing the rest of the party could do to stop it. He could dominate with a rediculous save, and was not exactly a huge team player.
Other than that, I've been playing D&D almost weekly since 3.0 came out in 2000, and that's the only time I've ever had issues with balance. Most people are team players and don't marginalize other group members. As well, spellcasters do have limited spell slots which usually got taken for damage spells over utility. Never has been a big issue in my groups, even up to our currently weekly Pathfinder game.
And don't say it's because we don't crunch the numbers. My group LOVES to make broken combinations of things. A couple of my players know the rules so well, I swear they can quote the Core Rulebook verbatim.
We had a 2e psion dwarf that had a mind feat backfire (they could do that back then). Instead of shrinking to 10% his size so he could escape, he bacame 10x his size. Of course, his clothes ripped, so now there was a giant naked dwarf running through the hillside!
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:26AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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Nearly every time I played 3e.
Because it's so easy to break the system people often end up doing by accident.
My first warforged for example was an artificer-monk with the kung-fu genius feat, imagine if bruce lee had a red mushroom, a degree in mechanical engineering and was made of oak and stone. I was the central focus of each encounter simply because i always had the right spell for the job, and/or a giant spiky battle-fist loaded with so many buffs it had its own character sheet.
One game we had shadow weave mage who set up a spell combo that allowed him to cast multiple disintigrates about 3 times per day, 4 or five as we leveled up this trivialized most encounters because the most important creatures and objects were reduced to slag in the first round.
Next game there was the MInotaur knight, who trivialized the rest of the party by having a reach of 11 squares or so, a high dex, combat reflexes and improved trip, except for the god-ificer who someohow convinced the DM that a glove of constant true strike was a 2000 gp item, and was dual wielding a pair of repeating light cross-bows. BEtween those two the other 5 members of the party may as well not have existed for all the impact they had on most encounters.
LEt's see I had a friend with a force missile mage who could on his own alpha strike dragons whose Cr was 8 higher than the party level even while being crushed and grappled by said dragon.
I'm not even going to get into the warlock shenannigans.
The one time balance didn't sscrew the game was probably when everyone just played god classes, cleric, druid, and wizard.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:30AM
#5
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I don't know if it's fair to call it balance issues ruining anything, but most 3.5 campaigns I ran kind of fizzled out in the early teens. It's generally more of a players vs. environment balance issue that I would pin that on, though, rather than a relative player contribution thing, although that didn't help.
On the reverse side, however, there are cases where things work out nicely balanced and the game really hums because everyone is contributing in neat and unique ways at the same time. Poor balance there wouldn't ruin the game, but it would make things less fun. If the standard is only as high as "no games explosively ruined", then balance issues aren't that big of a deal, but some people might have higher standards. We have tasted the fruit.
Dwarves invented beer so they could toast to their axes. Dwarves invented axes to kill people and take their beer.
Swanmay Syndrome: Despite the percentages given in the Monster Manual, in reality 100% of groups of swans contain a Swanmay, because otherwise the DM would not have put any swans in the game.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:31AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jul 18, 2007
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How often has balance issues ruined your game?
Ummm...they haven't. And I play with some serious game-breakers.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:33AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2011
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Assuming you actually mean IMbalance issues, frequently, particularly in 3e.
Any time I had a spellcaster in a game with one or more non-spellcasters, there was one phrase I would hear constantly; "Don't bother."
The rogue wants to go pump someone for information?
"Don't bother; I'll just cast Charm Person."
The fighter wants to intimidate someone?
"Don't bother; I'll wildshape into (huge scary thing)." or "Don't bother, I'll cast Cause Fear."
Anybody else wants to do something in combat?"
"Don't bother; I'll cast (encounter-trivializing spell)."
And this is just on the player side. It was nearly impossible to create encounters that could challenge the spellcasters without making the martial characters useless, or challenge the martial characters without the spellcasters curbstomping them. I couldn't run adventures involving anything resembling a mystery, because the spellcasters could just cast Detects, or just call up their god on speed-dial and get the answers. And I refused to resort to the lameness of frequent anti-magic fields or every bad guy being festooned with magic items just to neuter them.
Eventually, I banned the cleric, druid, and wizard, and cut out every plot-breaking, skill-replacing, or save-or-lose spell in the game (about 20% of the list, I'd say). This is why I switched to 4e on release day; I wanted to play a game I didn't have to houserule into the ground to make it workable.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:39AM
#8
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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I haven't really had many "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" issues so much at the tables I've played at. The only instance is with a munchkiny player who wanted to be a psionic character (psychic warrior I think he agreed on). Obnoxiousness combined with the rules to excuse it lead to a lame night. Needless to say, the little demon was cast away and never seen again. Now, don't think it's impossible to warp 4th into a similar monster. I've delt with people that broke the game in 4th, usually through cheating the system... or even going against it. All in all, these issues with balance/imbalance have been on behalf of problem players. When I've played with good (or at least considerate) people, I haven't bumped into this.
Disgruntled ghost of the Knights of W.T.F.
(Keep D&D alive, end the edition wars!)
"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Disclaimer: Most of my posts are based on opinions (and are sometimes humorous, other times inspirational)
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:40AM
#9
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From a combat perspective, I had a few 3.5 experiences where varying levels of optimization caused unbalance. While it may not have necessarily ruined the game, it certainly caused some challenges to insure that encounters were balanced. Not that easy to balance an encounter when one player can either dish out or take far more damage than the other characters could.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 06, 2013 - 11:48AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2004
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Assuming you actually mean IMbalance issues, frequently, particularly in 3e.
Any time I had a spellcaster in a game with one or more non-spellcasters, there was one phrase I would hear constantly; "Don't bother."
The rogue wants to go pump someone for information?
"Don't bother; I'll just cast Charm Person."
The fighter wants to intimidate someone?
"Don't bother; I'll wildshape into (huge scary thing)." or "Don't bother, I'll cast Cause Fear."
Anybody else wants to do something in combat?"
"Don't bother; I'll cast (encounter-trivializing spell)."
And this is just on the player side. It was nearly impossible to create encounters that could challenge the spellcasters without making the martial characters useless, or challenge the martial characters without the spellcasters curbstomping them. I couldn't run adventures involving anything resembling a mystery, because the spellcasters could just cast Detects, or just call up their god on speed-dial and get the answers. And I refused to resort to the lameness of frequent anti-magic fields or every bad guy being festooned with magic items just to neuter them.
Eventually, I banned the cleric, druid, and wizard, and cut out every plot-breaking, skill-replacing, or save-or-lose spell in the game (about 20% of the list, I'd say). This is why I switched to 4e on release day; I wanted to play a game I didn't have to houserule into the ground to make it workable.
Pretty much this except no one played non-casters. If EVERYONE can cast those kind of spells, it gets back into a crazy kind of balance. Need to fight in melee? send in the druid's animals! Or summoned creatures! or elementals!
Now we DID get people with a few multi-class levels in fighter/thief, but that was just to get abilities/qualify for Prestige classes and not to actually play the class.
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