I'm thinking of my game. And I'm thinking about balance, and I'm not sure I want it.
I want may players to look for edges, look for angles. Avoid fair fights. If the are clever and understand the situation I want them to be able to leverage the environment or NPCs or monsters and solve the encounter with out rolly any dice. Bot ever encounter. Some times they'll have to fight and the dice or their tactics will decide. But I want them looking for advantage.
If they can never stack the odds to turn a close thing into a blow out there really isn't any point in planning ahead.
Any one have any thoughts or suggestions on unbalanced adventures?
Nothing spoils verisimilitude in quite the same way as all of the encounters being slightly less powerful than the party. Sometimes they should be faced with overwhelming power (and not just when the GM wants to railroad them). And those small groups of goblins they used to fight at low levels? They shouldn't disappear as soon as the party no longer breaks a sweat dealing with them.
So let the players use their judgment of whether they can win an encounter, or whether they should run for the hills. I think that breathes life into a campaign.
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PM
Any one have any thoughts or suggestions on unbalanced adventures?
I think like most things it's a question of finding the right midpoint. Encounters that kill most or all of the party too soon is just as boring as encounters guaranteed to always be a little less powerful than the party.
A good variety of easy vs. hard-but-beatable-by-the-clever sounds like a good approach, as long as you do two things: (1) always make sure the really hard encounters have a way around them or an Achilles' heel the PCs can use, and (2) give people at least a ballpark sense of what their real odds are before they're inescapably committed. Nothing ticks off players faster than feeling like the GM or the adventure tricked them into a challenge or contest they couldn't possibly win.
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PMAvoid fair fights.
You are basically asking your party to be cold-blooded murderers. I've played games like this and they get very disturbing very fast.
Pausing to allow your enemy to draw his sword and prepare for the fight is the action of a hero. Stabbing them in their sleep is not.
That being said, I think the classic D&D dungeon style works the best. Since each dungeon level gets more and more dangerous as the party descends, it effectively allows the players to determine the difficulty of the game as they play it. So, the party can choose to delve deep and fact overwhelming odds or stick to the upper levels where it is safer but less lucrative. The main idea, though, is that players are just suddenly confronted with an overpowered enemy randomly, it is the result of a choice to travel away from the safer areas. Note that this doesn't have to be an actual dungeon, just any sort of system where it is possible for the players to guestimate the level of danger of different areas For example, letting them chose between an adventure in the Elven Woods or the Forbidden Forest.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 26, 2022, 06:36:21 PM
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PMAvoid fair fights.
You are basically asking your party to be cold-blooded murderers. I've played games like this and they get very disturbing very fast.
Pausing to allow your enemy to draw his sword and prepare for the fight is the action of a hero. Stabbing them in their sleep is not.
That being said, I think the classic D&D dungeon style works the best. Since each dungeon level gets more and more dangerous as the party descends, it effectively allows the players to determine the difficulty of the game as they play it. So, the party can choose to delve deep and fact overwhelming odds or stick to the upper levels where it is safer but less lucrative. The main idea, though, is that players are just suddenly confronted with an overpowered enemy randomly, it is the result of a choice to travel away from the safer areas. Note that this doesn't have to be an actual dungeon, just any sort of system where it is possible for the players to guestimate the level of danger of different areas For example, letting them chose between an adventure in the Elven Woods or the Forbidden Forest.
So, for D&D and the like this is potentially a pretty solid point, depending on what a fair fight looks like from your perspective. Doing this sort of thing may perhaps encourage them to take every advantage, including immoral ones, unless you just mean that they should use environmental shoves, clever maneuvers on the fly, and the like, which I feel can be fun if done sparingly enough that they don't just become requirements or routine. Diplomacy can be fun, but also may encourage them to behave unheroically, which unless their alignments and the general tone of the campaign were meant to reflect that, IDK.
I might also add that in D&D and the like a lot of the draw is often in the combat crunch, since that's where characters are best mechanically defined, and the further away you go from that the less players get to use their abilities, and the more things are determined by fiat and what the DM and DM alone thinks is a clever idea. Which can be good with a creative DM everybody agrees with and sharp players on the same wavelength, but can potentially I think fall apart otherwise. Likewise, if a DM is seen as being too harsh with rulings they may be accused of "arbitrarily killing characters", whereas letting them constantly emerge victorious from fights they mechanically should not win may potentially be seen as diminishing player agency or risk/victory railroading, albeit not in a directly cheating way like DM "fudging" without player agreement.
Speaking of combat crunch, consider that players may take this as a challenge to optimize their characters through the roof if not told not to. Which is fun for some players and DMs but not others. Or lead to cheese mechanical combos being spammed. Likewise, if not everybody does the arms race but some do, you may have things like a low level 5e moon druid overshadowing everybody else because the player felt they had to bring their mechanical A game. Which is not always a problem intrinsically, but can be where player agency is diminished and the other players care.
That said, this all assumes D&D type stuff for lawfuls or goods. Call of Cthulhu is inherently punishing and random, as well as potentially vicious to players in combat, so that kind of fight avoidance or creative mentality will almost be the default there. Or heck, wanna play WOD with a further right ST reading? Combat is potentially quite brutal because you never know what lines of attack will be utilized for supernatural and natural approaches, they can gang up on you, and hits take a sizeable chunk out of hit points typically, assuming you didn't just max oWOD soak and they don't have aggravated damage. Plus loss of humanity and the like from sketch things is legit something they may have to worry about or be encouraged to work into their characters' story. Or in DFRPG a lot of an adventure, which is not necessarily raw combat to begin with, can come down to clever FATE maneuvers and aspect invocations, or smart spellcasting (which is admittedly pretty strong if you've built for it).
So I'd say a lot of it still depends contextually on a fair number of different factors.
Balance for balance sake is not a good thing. Balance that emerges organically from reasonable rulings often is a good thing. Because then it becomes a thing that players can reason from, for future actions, with some reasonable chance of making it work.
Note that action in setting terms is also separate from action via manipulating the game rules. If you find yourself putting in rules solely to stop rules lawyers, stop. Instead, leave it up to the GM to adjudicate. That is, a clever plans in terms of the situations and setting and the abilities of the characters is great. A "clever" plan that involves twisting a rule is not.
Balance of "screen time", opportunities to shine, etc. are also a function of the GM running the game. That is, don't make the "sailor" character or the mounted knight have artificial constraints or boosts to make up for when there are no ships or horse around--or opposite, when they are. If the game isn't going to feature those things very much, then let the players know. If the characters are all more or less balanced for every possible scene, then that all but ensures that they are bland or the adventure is or both.
That leaves rules balance tweaks where the compromise of the game system meets the thing being modeled. So OK, maybe a guy with a greatsword in your wizard's face is maybe not quite as threatening as you envision it, because you want mages not dying every time that happens. With all such things, it's good to work backwards from the intent. How dangerous is it meant to be when a guy waving a wand running around in a robe gets in melee with a warrior? "Balance" the rules around whatever that intent is.
Quote
You are basically asking your party to be cold-blooded murderers. I've played games like this and they get very disturbing very fast.
Pausing to allow your enemy to draw his sword and prepare for the fight is the action of a hero. Stabbing them in their sleep is not.
Hedge hobbit.
That wasn't what I ment. But it could be a pitfall if I'm not careful.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 26, 2022, 09:42:11 PM
Balance for balance sake is not a good thing. Balance that emerges organically from reasonable rulings often is a good thing. Because then it becomes a thing that players can reason from, for future actions, with some reasonable chance of making it work.
Balance of "screen time", opportunities to shine, etc. are also a function of the GM running the game. That is, don't make the "sailor" character or the mounted knight have artificial constraints or boosts to make up for when there are no ships or horse around--or opposite, when they are. If the game isn't going to feature those things very much, then let the players know. If the characters are all more or less balanced for every possible scene, then that all but ensures that they are bland or the adventure is or both.
This is in the same ball park as what I mean. If the party is mounted and have a mounted specialist of some kind, then I want them to trounce bug bears in the open. Or archers. The terrain favors cav. Cav should win.
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That leaves rules balance tweaks where the compromise of the game system meets the thing being modeled. So OK, maybe a guy with a greatsword in your wizard's face is maybe not quite as threatening as you envision it, because you want mages not dying every time that happens. With all such things, it's good to work backwards from the intent. How dangerous is it meant to be when a guy waving a wand running around in a robe gets in melee with a warrior? "Balance" the rules around whatever that intent is.
I want the guy with the great sword to be dangerous enough that he doesn't have to swing, because everyone, especially the mage knows he
will be cut down. Unless he has a trick. Magic isn't a trick if everyone knows he has it.
QuotePausing to allow your enemy to draw his sword and prepare for the fight is the action of a hero. Stabbing them in their sleep is not.
Deep disagree. Either they deserved to die - in which case there is not reason to grant them any notion of honor, or they did not - in which case killing them in honorable duel is still wicked murder and wanton risk of life :P
Rare cases of tragic conflicts aside, where honor is sort of way of saying - we don't really want to kill another, alas circumstances.
Where I find balance useful is between PCs in the party. First, it cuts down on squabbling and hard feelings (I often run games with my godkids who range from 11-17 and adults are only theoretically more mature) and better allows me to judge the difficulty of the encounters I'm creating for them... i.e. do I want them to have an easy time or really push them... unbalanced PCs are harder to account for.
That said, this balance doesn't need to be absolute... more of "exists within a reasonable range."
When one PC has AC 16 and 25 hp and another has AC 19 and 30 hp then one is a bit tougher than the other when facing something with a +7 to hit that deals 9 damage, but it's close enough. Similarly, the slightly more fragile one might make two attacks for 1d6+5 while the other delivers a single one for 1d12+7 then those numbers are close enough too, but in the opposite direction so the two PCs feel balanced with each other for the players and also average out on offense and defense when you, as the GM are deciding how much they can handle.
Balance between PCs and individual monsters/encounters isn't that important... the only way it is important comes down to how easily the GM can determine if the threat is at the level they desire it to be. When you know threat X is something the party can handle all day long, 2X is something they can overcome 4-5 times a day before their resources are running dry and 3X is something they pull off once or twice a day then you can plan appropriately - particularly if PCs are robust enough to survive in even overmatched encounters long enough to realize they're overmatched and survive if they then try to flee or surrender.
ex. when a monster's hit deals 20 damage to either the 25 or 30 hp PC before they even get their turn they know the monster is above their weight class and can flee or surrender or attempt parley. By contrast, hitting one for 40 damage instakills one before they even have the opportunity to make a choice. This might be realistic in a "anyone can die" story perhaps, but most RPGs these days bill themselves as heroic fantasy and instakilling basically halts the game for that player by fiat until they can build a new character and the GM finds a place to introduce them.
I've had more than my share of games where no attention was paid to balance and its related metrics where the entire mood of the evening gets spoiled by a new GM not being able to reliably judge how difficult the encounter they set up was... and the "I'm gonna just fudge the dice here" ones are even worse than the "let the unavoidable TPK happen" ones as you know there are no real stakes for the first one (the latter one is still a buzzkill, but at least there's the prospect of a good game if the GM can figure out the system's difficulty scale.
"Balance" in this case is a big help for being able to figure out that scale. Knowing your party can easily handle threat X, will struggle with 2X, and surely die if facing 4X doesn't mean you're stuck throwing X at the party because that's "balanced"... it means that when you decide to throw 3X at them it'll be a hell of a fight they'll have to work at to survive, but it's not a hopeless fight. You'll also know that if you only throw X/2 at them it'll be a curbstomp in the PC's favor.
Balance/Solid Metrics are a tool. I am of the opinion that it's always better to be a PC with a rope in their pack they never need, than be the one who desperately needs a rope, but doesn't have one.
I tend to judge RPG systems by that same metric; better to have balance/metrics you can ignore if you want than not have them and have to guess.
Addendum on the deadly encounters thing; a maxim a very good GM once told me is that "for heroic fantasy to be fun then you need to allow for stupidity to lead to character death, but bad luck alone should not lead to character death."
If a PC dies because they choose to walk into a dragon lair at level 1 that's stupidity. If a PC dies because they stumbled into a dragon's lair at level 1 with no warning signs whatsoever it was even there that's not fun.
His correlary to this was "you can't count engaging with the game's core premise as stupidity on its own." Basically, if your game is about exploring dungeons then the act of entering a dungeon to explore it can't count as stupidity for the "can lead to death" evaluation. Not checking for traps? Sure... that's stupid. Not listening at doors? Sure... that's stupid. Getting hit with an earworm parasite that kills you for listening at the door? Stupid. Rocks fall. Everyone dies? Stupid.
It is a lot easier to apply this philosophy without the need to fudge dice rolls when you have good balance metrics.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 27, 2022, 09:14:49 AM
"Balance" in this case is a big help for being able to figure out that scale. Knowing your party can easily handle threat X, will struggle with 2X, and surely die if facing 4X doesn't mean you're stuck throwing X at the party because that's "balanced"... it means that when you decide to throw 3X at them it'll be a hell of a fight they'll have to work at to survive, but it's not a hopeless fight. You'll also know that if you only throw X/2 at them it'll be a curbstomp in the PC's favor.
Thanks. Your whole post was helpful but this part right here really gets to what I was talking about. I don't want to be picking their fights. I don't want to be throwing any Xs at them I want them to choose their own fights. Not for every encounter. But for some of them.
I don't want to run heroic fantasy. So the players can walk away from lots of encounter's. And I really want them to choose which challenge's to face and how to face them. I will have to be clear on how dangerous and tough things are so they can make meaningful choices.
Most of all I want them to be able to turn what I thought would be a TPK in to a cake walk.
Moral is going to be a factor. Most creatures won't fight to the death. And I am going to add a crit table and a reliable way to get to roll on it. I'm thinking if you have advantage and both dice hit you get to roll on the table. I don't like the fights that go on like their chopping fire wood.
"Balance" is relative to what?.
Effectively "Balance" should be how the GM expresses the world to the PC's and it has to make sense. If Orcs are just as smart as humans, and they out-produce population-wise, there should be some very specific reasons why they are not the dominate species. It's all about controlling the context of the game either by outright mechanics, or by narrative establishment.
For example - in the case where Orcs are in fact as smart as Humans, while being physically superior and more aggressive, it might be that the Humans of that world have magic, and the civilizations of humanity reflect that (they live in sky-cities, or have magical means of protecting themselves from Orc invasions). BUT once the PC's are out and about, they must know that Orcs are *intensely* dangerous (or are they?) OR it might be that the Orcs are predated upon by much scarier stuff and their population is controlled by their own savage pursuits tied to their own survival.
The same calculus should be used to describe the world - even if on paper one species or race might be clearly "mechanically superior" the game should reflect the status quo of why they might not be the ruling class. The GM's job is to present that status quo and whatever intricacies that underpin that status-quo, and especially where that status-quo is deviated from.
"Balance" in terms of system should be aimed at task-resolution mechanics should make sense. If a firearm does less damage than a dagger, or if mechanics allow for a Thief to backstab with a catapult, then you might have some mechanical balance issues to work out.
The idea of "balance" based on the encounter level is playing a very thinly veiled boardgame. This notion of "balance" is not the way to present the world. It generally tries to emulate video-game mechanics in lieu of actual GM's presenting the world authentically. If you're running a Module or AP and not customizing it to your setting and personal needs, it's like microwaving a steak. Sure its steak... but it's the personal touch that makes it come alive.
"Balance" in the popular modern concept is an illusion of a player wanting his PC toon to be the most efficient murder-hobo in the prepackaged adventure and everyone else in their designated slot, but no one is mechanically superior to one another and all encounters are weighed and measured against some numerical indicators of the party's overall assumed strength.
"Balance" for sandbox GM's is keeping maximal plate-spinning on the setting details that wants the PC's to interact with the setting in the widest variety of ways that the PC's may never expect without all the plates crashing down around the group. What the player's are mechanically capable of is relevant only to the fact that any ability that exists in that setting does so for a reason. It's the GM's job to establish the context of those abilities in-game. (It magic common? How hard is it to get military grade weapons? etc. but most IMPORTANTLY - WHY?)
Application of the context of the setting is maintained by *consistency* of that application. This is the Way.
I view balance as having two types: meta and in-world (for lack of better terminology).
In-world balance is the Orc King sending a scouting party when it would be smarter to send a full warband, as long as there is a sensible in-world reason for doing so. The party can then gauge the strength of the Orcs without getting destroyed and it shouldn't break verisimilitude. This is one of the conceits of running a game. You sometimes find a reason to make NPCs behave sub-optimally to give the PCs a chance. Perhaps the Orc King was over-confident because of recent easy victories. The world dictates the balance.
Meta balance is the other one, i.e., when the warband does show up, it's conveniently right-sized to be beaten by the PCs. In this case, the balance dictates the world (i.e., the Orc King likes weak ass warbands for some reason).
First, no one believes in "balance" - if they did, the monster would win 50% of the fights.
What "modern" players want is that the PCs rarely risk being defeated, except, MAYBE, for the final boss.
I hate the idea that every foe the PCs encounter is tailored to give them an exciting fight with no real danger.
I LIKE the idea that PCs get to PICK their fight. They can negotiate, escape, sneak around, attack by surprise, retreat, parlay, surrender, bribe, etc.
The thing with the 3e experience for me is that it became an arms race to figure out who could deliver the most combat crunch in the shortest span possible, and it eventually annoyed the shit out of me because I hated serving as the punching bag... so the entire concept of combat balance just makes me want to vomit. Eventually, the whole experience revolved around planning combat encounters that provided some bit of challenge, where upon the clever PCs would (yet again) beat the sh!t out of all my planning. Just a fucking nightmare experience as a DM, trying to provide entertainment and only serving as a got-dang punching bag.
I'd rather create tension through other means, and combat should be a release of the tension (culminating in death). Then you build it back up again.
Threats should be personal, not attrition-based (chipping away HP to 0), IMO. In short, balance is for shite.
You might find this article vaguely relevant: https://web.archive.org/web/20220516062841/https://sinisterdesign.net/the-battle-system-i-wish-rpgs-would-stop-using/
Quote from: Headless on June 27, 2022, 09:56:51 AM
Thanks. Your whole post was helpful but this part right here really gets to what I was talking about. I don't want to be picking their fights. I don't want to be throwing any Xs at them I want them to choose their own fights. Not for every encounter. But for some of them.
I think you misunderstand my meaning.
Unless they're rolling them off a random table, the GM is always picking which fights are available to the PCs. They are deciding where and sometimes when (some monsters move about and so are not present at some times in the day) each potential fight is in relation to the PCs. And unless they're relying 100% on dice rolls on the Reaction Roll table with no adjustment for roleplay or interaction then they're deciding how reasonable the PC's efforts are to avoid a fight when they encounter a situation with the potential to break into one.
If you decide to place an unwinnable fight on the map with no clues to its existence to forewarn the PCs they might want to turn back... then you are choosing to place an undetectable TPK trap on the table. If the ability to judge difficulty is obscured then perhaps you can do this by accident. All "balance/difficulty mechanics" do is minimize the chance that this happens by accident. If you've done it, its because you wanted an undetectable TPK trap in the game.
And that's fine... maybe your players enjoy that style of play. But many times it feels like the main argument against having such a system in place is that it destroys the ability of GM's to pretend that their choice to put the TPK into the game was an accident instead of a deliberate choice. The lack of balancing mechanics gives cover to bad behavior masked as ignorance of the system.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 27, 2022, 12:50:51 PM
First, no one believes in "balance" - if they did, the monster would win 50% of the fights.
What "modern" players want is that the PCs rarely risk being defeated, except, MAYBE, for the final boss.
I hate the idea that every foe the PCs encounter is tailored to give them an exciting fight with no real danger.
I LIKE the idea that PCs get to PICK their fight. They can negotiate, escape, sneak around, attack by surprise, retreat, parlay, surrender, bribe, etc.
I agree. When people talk about balance it's usually in the context of designing combat encounters that provide a challenge but can be won at the current level of the PCs. I do prefer to run and play in games where accepting different outcomes (avoiding combat, fleeing, surrender, negotiation, etc) or tilting the scale (setting an ambush, potion, a ruse, etc.) are common. An evenly matched fight to the death should be very, very rare.
I'm thinking about what I want. What I'm going for.
I want the solution to the problem to often not be on their character sheet.
That's what I mean by balance. You can balance a character sheet it's hard but they have done it. You can't balance everything.
The best balance for me is having everyone's stories take a turn on the stage. I don't care about the fights as fights.
Meeting a band of goblins in the road? Meh.
A band of goblins that is going to your player's village to murder his family? Now you've got stakes. Now you've got motivation to stomp those goblins into the mud.
And then you need everyone's part to be balanced in all of this.
The combat shit? Meh.
Murder Hobo'ing is fun, don't get me wrong... but it's not so much about the fighting as it is about participating in a fun and present world.
And if you're not going to do that, then at least engage your players' senses. Like, the good ol' gonzo dungeon where you're using the old school creativity to entice and excite rather than some finely tuned combat machine that you're unleashing on your players in some kind of adversarial role.
I'm really on the players' side as a cheerleader, not an adversary (even if the encounters are trying to kill them). Some of the more combat-oriented games just become so adversarial, it's like a painful slog to get through them.
Make it interesting and present and important to your players. That's the balance sauce, IMO.
Relying on combat to do that is kind of a mistake, I think.
This comes up over on BGG now and then. And more than a few of them worship it like a religion.
The big problem that they always miss over there is that balance is an illusion.
Balanced for What? For Who? For when?
A system balanced for a cookie cutter group of Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, Thief may be a complete wipeout for a party of 4 magic users. Or a cakewalk for four fighters.
This is where some WOTC modules fell totally apart as they were 'balanced' for a cookie cutter group and there was no way to progress AT ALL if you were lacking one of these somehow. While other adventures are not so lockstep. But their idea of balance skews in some other way and again will collapse if the party or players do not play the way the module is balanced to.
If one side is strategizing and the other is not then that can skew balance straight to hell too. Or if one side has range and the other does not.
This is the age old situation that there is not such thing as balance once things actually get rolling. I had a situation where a group of 4 kobolds up on a ledge out of reach of most of the party was able to nearly massacre the party with what would otherwise have been a very easy encounter. Same campaign and some time later the Party as facing off against a dragon and started using the terrain of its own lair against it and won.
I used to worry about this, but experience has taught me the players will balance the game for you. It's probably a good idea to signpost the difficulty if your players are used to balanced encounters. This is fairly easy to arrange by letting the PCs witness the destruction of an NPC group or something similar. Then just let them have at it.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 27, 2022, 12:50:51 PM
I hate the idea that every foe the PCs encounter is tailored to give them an exciting fight with no real danger.
I do not understand how a fight can be exciting when it is carefully stacked such that the PCs are intended to win. I find combat like that to be a chore, and would rather roll once to ablate resource and move on than play it as the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Balance is for the players to find, no the GM to arrange. How tough of a mission do the players accept and what do they do to mitigate it instead of level locking out missions or adjusting them to always be safe. I do not believe that PCs are supposed to win or loose, as it is up to them to pick their fights and pursue their desired outcomes. A ramping challenge against a sentient adversary falls down as soon the adversary should identify the PCs as a threat an counter with an overmatched asset instead of sending in the next +1 mook. That would be a good time for the PCs to retreat and seek allies instead of yet another balanced PCs-are-supposed-win encounter.
The GM needs some idea of the difficulty of an encounter in order to properly convey whatever clues are present, should the players be on the ball enough to pay attention and look for the information.
I would suggest that the AD&D/RC/BEMCI system of telegraphing this information to the GM is superior to the WotC various challenge rating attempts, if for no other reason that the "Hit Dice + asterisk for special abilities" system has less false precision. Both are about equally vague in practice, but the earlier versions reinforce that vagueness to the GM by their nature.
However, I think GM experience is the vital ingredient, and that part of the job can't really be done without it. Because it is as much art as a procedure.
Balance can only be evaluated when you have a certain objective in mind. In a RPG, what objectives are there, really? All of the games that try to boil down characters into strictly mechanically-comparable units come across (IMO) as really sterile and inflexible.
RPG games are mostly about the social dynamic, which can never be captured by the game rules. You can try to balance various mechanical aspects in a limited scope, but what really matters at the end of the day is if the player feels engaged, like they're contributing to a game and not overshadowed by other players.
Balance, in terms of some sort of rating system for challenges, is something that absolutely 100% is a useful tool for GMs if for no other reason than this:
The more open your game, the greater your sandbox, the more freedom you give your players--you know, all that shit some GMs give as reasons why balance is somehow beneath them--the less practical it is to be prepared for everything. But if you can anticipate what players are more or less likely to do next, you can prioritize what you prepare, minimizing your prep time while maximizing preparedness. And the key to being able to anticipate is understanding how players make their decisions. And that can vary a lot, but easily one of the most powerful tools is to understand their risk/reward assessments.
If in your RPG 2 giants are roughly four-times the challenge of 10 goblins, the players sooner or later with experience that to one degree or another. That makes an objective rating system a useful proxy for the imperfect and subjective assessments of the players. If the giants are going to sap 80% of your resources whereas the goblins will only take up 20%, then facing the giants is going to have to do a LOT more in terms of moving the party closer to their goals to make that a viable path. And if the party is only at half strength, then perhaps facing the giants is out of the question regardless of how much reward.
Conversely, when the prospect for reward far exceeds the risk assessment, wise players should be suspicious. The greater the degree to which the reward exceeds the risk, the more obvious to more players it becomes that the situation is a clearly-baited trap.
Same thing even when it comes to assessing the doability of a challenge. I was putting together an adventure once where after doing some number crunching, I determined 1 giant was a dead even match for the entire party. That would have been an exciting fight. But I felt at the time that there had already been a lot of combat in the campaign and we needed to mix things up a bit. I made it 4 giants instead. After that, I realized if I had made it just 2 giants, the players might not have recognized until it was too late that was a fight they couldn't win. With 4 giants, it was more obvious they needed to think of a different solution. So the objective ratings are even useful in the face of player fallibility. You can use these measures to make the relative dangers more or less obvious to players.
So yeah. "Balance" is a good thing. That's the easy question. The hard question is how to do it. A creature that is very powerful in combat--much more powerful than the party--is a death sentence if it's movement rate is faster than the party's. It's far less threatening if it's very slow. The dreaded beholder, under some generic, plain vanilla set of "default" conditions is easily among the weakest monsters in the Monster Manual. It's movement rate is only 3". It's longest-range attack is Charm Person at a range of 12". Most of its attacks have a range of 6" or less. It can be deadly in a maze of a dungeon with a lot of twists and turns where it's hard to run at full speed and where you can't attack from a long distance. For this reason, I imagine a beholder will rarely stray from a very specific environment where it is powerful. There's no general frame of reference that will allow you to accurately rate the creature.
For this reason (and because it's my strength) I always do my own math and never rely on the built-in challenge rating system, if the RPG even has one.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 26, 2022, 06:36:21 PM
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PMAvoid fair fights.
You are basically asking your party to be cold-blooded murderers. I've played games like this and they get very disturbing very fast.
Pausing to allow your enemy to draw his sword and prepare for the fight is the action of a hero. Stabbing them in their sleep is not.
This is a game, in part, based on stories about characters with dubious moral character, where the primary means of character advancement was gathering up huge amounts of loot.
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PM
Any one have any thoughts or suggestions on unbalanced adventures?
My brother was GMing a new "campaign". We rolled up characters and started in "The Tavern", getting to know the characters and learning about the adventure to come.
Then, an adult Red Dragon ripped the roof off the tavern and breathed fire on everyone inside. Even making saves (I don't remember if anyone did) the damage was enough to kill everyone inside, including all the characters.
We had a good laugh, and he said he did it because we'd never done something like that.
While an absurd example, It does illustrate that there are some encounters that are simply Game Over. Most GMs won't put such an encounter in the adventure. At best, there would be some kind of telegraphing or warning so that the players have some kind of input before they get fried.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 27, 2022, 09:35:07 AM
Addendum on the deadly encounters thing; a maxim a very good GM once told me is that "for heroic fantasy to be fun then you need to allow for stupidity to lead to character death, but bad luck alone should not lead to character death."
If a PC dies because they choose to walk into a dragon lair at level 1 that's stupidity. If a PC dies because they stumbled into a dragon's lair at level 1 with no warning signs whatsoever it was even there that's not fun.
His correlary to this was "you can't count engaging with the game's core premise as stupidity on its own." Basically, if your game is about exploring dungeons then the act of entering a dungeon to explore it can't count as stupidity for the "can lead to death" evaluation. Not checking for traps? Sure... that's stupid. Not listening at doors? Sure... that's stupid. Getting hit with an earworm parasite that kills you for listening at the door? Stupid. Rocks fall. Everyone dies? Stupid.
It is a lot easier to apply this philosophy without the need to fudge dice rolls when you have good balance metrics.
I've boiled my approach to encounter design and difficulty to, if the players lose (fail to achieve an objective, characters get killed, imprisoned, whatever) they should be thinking "We could have done that better" and not "That was the GM being a dick" or "We didn't have a chance" Now, that's a goddamn fine line to walk, and you can't control what players think, but it's a goal to aim for.
Quote from: Headless on June 27, 2022, 04:55:10 PM
I'm thinking about what I want. What I'm going for.
I want the solution to the problem to often not be on their character sheet.
That's what I mean by balance. You can balance a character sheet it's hard but they have done it. You can't balance everything.
Then don't use a game which allows characters to rely on feats or special abilities - which means 99% of D&D type games.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 28, 2022, 05:14:34 AM
Quote from: Headless on June 26, 2022, 04:35:17 PM
Any one have any thoughts or suggestions on unbalanced adventures?
My brother was GMing a new "campaign". We rolled up characters and started in "The Tavern", getting to know the characters and learning about the adventure to come.
Then, an adult Red Dragon ripped the roof off the tavern and breathed fire on everyone inside. Even making saves (I don't remember if anyone did) the damage was enough to kill everyone inside, including all the characters.
We had a good laugh, and he said he did it because we'd never done something like that.
While an absurd example, It does illustrate that there are some encounters that are simply Game Over. Most GMs won't put such an encounter in the adventure. At best, there would be some kind of telegraphing or warning so that the players have some kind of input before they get fried.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 27, 2022, 09:35:07 AM
Addendum on the deadly encounters thing; a maxim a very good GM once told me is that "for heroic fantasy to be fun then you need to allow for stupidity to lead to character death, but bad luck alone should not lead to character death."
If a PC dies because they choose to walk into a dragon lair at level 1 that's stupidity. If a PC dies because they stumbled into a dragon's lair at level 1 with no warning signs whatsoever it was even there that's not fun.
His correlary to this was "you can't count engaging with the game's core premise as stupidity on its own." Basically, if your game is about exploring dungeons then the act of entering a dungeon to explore it can't count as stupidity for the "can lead to death" evaluation. Not checking for traps? Sure... that's stupid. Not listening at doors? Sure... that's stupid. Getting hit with an earworm parasite that kills you for listening at the door? Stupid. Rocks fall. Everyone dies? Stupid.
It is a lot easier to apply this philosophy without the need to fudge dice rolls when you have good balance metrics.
I've boiled my approach to encounter design and difficulty to, if the players lose (fail to achieve an objective, characters get killed, imprisoned, whatever) they should be thinking "We could have done that better" and not "That was the GM being a dick" or "We didn't have a chance" Now, that's a goddamn fine line to walk, and you can't control what players think, but it's a goal to aim for.
I have considered going something like what your Brother did there in a campaign, but not just for the LOLs but also for the 2nd wave of player characters. We use Savage Worlds almost exclusively now, so choosing the appropriate "level" to do something like that is tough. around Seasoned seems right for tone, as the players will be invested in their characters, but not so attached they harbor resentment for the event. The purpose of the event would be to create a real villain in a campaign, one that is a purposeful antagonist rather than one that is there to see what lootz it has in its lair. A dragon attack like that and then having the children of the adventurers gather a decade or two later to seek out and slay the dragon creates an arc that has a personal connection to the players (as their other character got killed), and one where every single thing those former characters ever did becomes an overblown folk tale (where even slaying a small group of goblins on the road has been archived as some great event where the group managed to thwart an army of evil humanoid ravagers) as well as their brave battle to attempt to save as many innocents as possible in a hopeless battle against a dragon (or some equivalent).
It is a bit bait and switch ( I thought it used as a sort of story device in something like "Death proof" where we find out the group of characters we are watching are not in fact the protagonists, but are merely humanized victims we focus a good deal more on so that their deaths mean more than Rando #1, 2, 3, etc. ) and I certainly would not use it for any group of players, and I am hesitant to use it for mine just because it is dickish to make such a railroaded event occur.
All that aside, these issues of balance is why I favor GURPS and Savage Worlds for games. The level 10 Fighter surrounded by zombies is literally at zero threat in D&D. Same if a score of guardsmen have crossbows aimed at him. This is not the case at all in SW and GURPS. Even an easy steam roll has a tiny element of danger too it, and any "fair" and "even" fight has a great deal of danger in it if the player is just trading blows. A mismatch is certain death without a bit of creativity and strategy. This goes for the bad guys too, and playing them as if they are creatures that had lives before they ran across the PCs makes a big difference in how encounters go, orc #5 has a small cache of coin and wants to start making goat jerky in his home village. Well Orc #5 just watched Orc #3 who is known as the best brawler and toughest fighting in this small warband get his shit pushed in by the raging barbarian among these sketchy looking cave burglars that have just broken into their camp and started killing and burning everything Fighting to the death is not on his mind, and he will gladly surrender and talk his remaining orc buddies into a parley with a group of characters where it is looking like even a win against them will result in big losses. People do not care to be in fights where they win and half their friends die. Why would most intelligent creatures (I try to make almost all undead and demons an exception to this, as their focus on complete destruction of enemies sets them apart as extremely dangerous and "evil" enemies) do it if most people would not do it? Thinking a bit more creates scenarios where a bluff and quick show of force...like the muscular barbarian intimidating a good number of enemies and dropping two in the first moments of a fight....allows for another character to give the remaining enemies a chance to consider talking it out with a bit more motivation. Things like that can make lots of encounters go differently. Remember, MOST even intelligent adversaries for your players are in the dark as to what the characters are capable of, and certain demonstrations of force (a strong melee warrior knocking down 2-3 a shot, a good archer hitting a foe through the opening in his/her helmet, a sorcerer blasting a group of foes, etc early would make most intelligent opposition do some quick math on just how much even victory will cost. I mean even the Nazis did not fight or kill to the last man.
Most everyone who sees this thread will already know this, but for clarity's sake it's useful to note that there are several different types of "balance" in an RPG, and they've all already been referenced upthread. There's balance between the players and their opposition, balance between PCSs, and spotlight balance.
The OP was talking about balance between players and their opposition, which is useful to think about, but having combats always be "balanced" leads to a monotonous game. I'm fine with encounters ranging from trivial to possible TPKs. But, since it's a game, the players should always have a chance. The enemy may be overwhelming in combat power, but there needs to be a way to hide run, negotiate, or just avoid the encounter so the PCs don't die.
Balance between PCs is again useful to think about, but not critical. Some folks think that if their PC is a shade weaker than another in a particular situation, then the game is broken. Not so. In games like Ars Magica players take turns running massively powerful magicians, D&D style companions, and teams of weak grunts, and fun is still had by all. An opposite example is 4E, where a focus on balance between PCs at the expense of all else pretty much wrecked the game.
The only balance that I really consider important is balance between player experiences in the game. I call this "spotlight balance" and it's simple. Every player should be the star some of the time, and every player should almost always have something useful to do.
oops ... <redacted>
Quote from: oggsmash on June 28, 2022, 08:39:57 AM
All that aside, these issues of balance is why I favor GURPS and Savage Worlds for games. The level 10 Fighter surrounded by zombies is literally at zero threat in D&D. Same if a score of guardsmen have crossbows aimed at him. This is not the case at all in SW and GURPS. Even an easy steam roll has a tiny element of danger too it, and any "fair" and "even" fight has a great deal of danger in it if the player is just trading blows. A mismatch is certain death without a bit of creativity and strategy.
This has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the encounter. Any system has a ratio of enemy to character where they are in no danger all the way to where they are in mortal danger. The system only changes the ratio.
Personally, I think balance is dumb. I am running an ars magica game right now. One character is an ex crusader wizard, another a muslim scholar. They are not equally effective in combat. Why on earth should I expect them to be.
The trick is just making sure that both get to have fun in the campaign and that means, that from time to time things happen, that are right up their wheelhouse, and sometimes not.
As for "I want things to happen that are solved without the character sheet"... I find that kinda dumb, because generally speaking the character sheet is where people put the stuff they want to do in the game.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 27, 2022, 09:17:01 PM
The GM needs some idea of the difficulty of an encounter in order to properly convey whatever clues are present, should the players be on the ball enough to pay attention and look for the information.
I would suggest that the AD&D/RC/BEMCI system of telegraphing this information to the GM is superior to the WotC various challenge rating attempts, if for no other reason that the "Hit Dice + asterisk for special abilities" system has less false precision. Both are about equally vague in practice, but the earlier versions reinforce that vagueness to the GM by their nature.
However, I think GM experience is the vital ingredient, and that part of the job can't really be done without it. Because it is as much art as a procedure.
I actually agree with your assessment that AD&D/BECMI's system of HD+ was a lot better than many of the attempts at CR by WotC.
To be slightly fair to WotC, their decision to scale quadratically with level basically requires abandoning the HD+ system of evaluation.
HD+ works because AC and damage are relatively static (stronger opponents tend to have higher values, but it is by no means guaranteed). As such the threat increases fairly linearly with HD and the variances low enough to be accounted for with the asterisks added to them.
3e however began the trend of scaling up both hit points and AC, attack bonuses and damage with increased ability scores further making the rate of increase in those less linear (a HD in AD&D was 1d8 hp for a monster; a HD in 3e was 1d6-1d12 each plus their current Con mod x HD... a 10 HD monster who gains 1HD and 2 Con gets 1dX+11 hp). The result was that threat scaled quadratically so that a 10HD opponent wasn't twice as strong as a 5HD opponent for a level 5 party... it was three times stronger... but PCs at level 10 were also 3 times stronger than level 5's so those 5HD monsters aren't half the threat to them, they're a third of the threat.
That's one of the reasons my own system is built around linear scaling; it's easier to judge threat when the 50 hp monster is approximately twice the threat of the 25 hp monster regardless of character level. It's also easier to drop monsters into naturalistically when anything in significant numbers remains a threat to the PCs.
An orc camp with 100 warriors will always be a lethal threat to a party if faced all at once regardless of level in my system. In 3e they'd be a speed bump to a high level party meaning, if the GM needs a threat in the region that will test them then camp needs to be giants or even demons that are so powerful they should have obliterated the nearby by town and it's 75 1HD warriors already.
Linear scaling both makes it easier to judge balance/threat, but also makes naturalistic world building easier in my experience.
Chris, I agree with everything you said in that last post.
My point, however, was more about the implied precision of the system. I can envision, for example, a system compatible with the WotC CR versions, that had the CR number, with a few "minuses and plusses" added on, that worked like the asterisks to constantly remind the GM that the CR is only a guideline. Maybe a certain 3E dragon would be "CR 9+++" to indicate that, "yeah, we said it is roughly CR 9 if you play the dragon stupid in a straight fight or the PCs have magic to counter its abilities, but if you use its abilities fully against a typical party, it can punch way above its weight." The 3E orc and 5E goblin might get one + on the same reasoning.
But yes, better to make the system more accessible to common sense, and linear advancement is definitely the way to go. If I remember how you had it set up, I went even more linear with mine, with a boost of hit points at the front and even less scaling. A typical fighter has something like 10 (7 + 1d6) at start, and maxes out around 92 (50 + 12d6) at the upper reaches of epic at level 24. In any given tier, the GM can almost treat different level individuals as effectively interchangeable for encounter capabilities, with the situation and player abilities of course far more determinant for how things will go.
QuoteAs for "I want things to happen that are solved without the character sheet"... I find that kinda dumb, because generally speaking the character sheet is where people put the stuff they want to do in the game.
Sure maybe. Players right a lot of stuff on their sheet. For example if one player is owed a favor from the duke they might right "favor from the duke" on their character sheet. And if they need to cash it in to solve their problem, then I guess the solution is on their sheet. But that's not really the spirt of what I ment.
I don't want the solutions to come out of the players hand book. Do you understand now?
Or maybe I miss understand you?
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 28, 2022, 11:32:07 AM
But yes, better to make the system more accessible to common sense, and linear advancement is definitely the way to go. If I remember how you had it set up, I went even more linear with mine, with a boost of hit points at the front and even less scaling. A typical fighter has something like 10 (7 + 1d6) at start, and maxes out around 92 (50 + 12d6) at the upper reaches of epic at level 24. In any given tier, the GM can almost treat different level individuals as effectively interchangeable for encounter capabilities, with the situation and player abilities of course far more determinant for how things will go.
Actually we're pretty close on values, we end in almost the same place, but mine starts higher so the overall scaling is even less; a typical PC starts with 25 and scales up to 95, the tier breaks are basically 50 for level 6 (expert tier) and 75 for level 11 (master tier) with max level being 15. The expectation is that journeyman tier (1-5) is rather quick, expert takes about three times longer than journeyman, and master tier takes about three times longer than expert.
Quote from: Headless on June 28, 2022, 02:39:14 PM
QuoteAs for "I want things to happen that are solved without the character sheet"... I find that kinda dumb, because generally speaking the character sheet is where people put the stuff they want to do in the game.
Sure maybe. Players right a lot of stuff on their sheet. For example if one player is owed a favor from the duke they might right "favor from the duke" on their character sheet. And if they need to cash it in to solve their problem, then I guess the solution is on their sheet. But that's not really the spirt of what I ment.
I don't want the solutions to come out of the players hand book. Do you understand now?
Or maybe I miss understand you?
Yeah, you misunderstand me. A player's character sheet is where they put what they like.
If they write fighter under class, they like to be some kind of warrior. If they put knight, they also have ideas about honour. If they put wizard, etc.
This goes on to equipment etc. If people write "rope" on their character sheet, they fully expect to use that rope and ignoring that information as the gamemaster is making your job harder than it needs to be.
Players will find creative solutions all by themselves without you forcing the issue. Just be prepared for it and do not mire it in technicalities.
Quote from: Headless on June 28, 2022, 02:39:14 PM
Sure maybe. Players right a lot of stuff on their sheet. For example if one player is owed a favor from the duke they might right "favor from the duke" on their character sheet. And if they need to cash it in to solve their problem, then I guess the solution is on their sheet. But that's not really the spirt of what I ment.
I don't want the solutions to come out of the players hand book. Do you understand now?
Or maybe I miss understand you?
If the issue with problem solving by character sheet and treating it as buttons to push in a point and click game, I suggest...
Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/five-simple-rules-for-dating-my-teenaged-skill-system/
Rule #1: Players Can Only Declare Actions or Ask Questions
When the DM asks a player: "what do you do," there are only two valid responses. And neither one involves the name of a skill.
First, the player can ask the DM a question about the world or the situation. "Do I know anything about the strange rune?" "Do I recognize the name 'The Clan of the Pointed Stick?" "Do I see anything hiding on the ceiling?" Notice, none of these things require the player to mention skills. The DM can respond with an answer or ask for a specific roll. "Make an Arcane Lore check, but only if you're trained." "Yes. The strange old man in the mask mentioned it last week. It is apparently a clan of martial artists." "Make an Observation roll with a -5 penalty because its dark."
Second, the player can describe what action his PC is taking. And he should do so as if the D&D adventure were a book and his PC was a character. It doesn't matter what skill or ability score the player thinks his PC should roll; what matters is what the PC is actually doing in the world and what the PC is hoping to accomplish. "I'll give the door a solid, standing kick." "I get a running start and jump over the chasm." "I subtly offer the guard a bribe to let us pass." The DM will ask for rolls as appropriate or determine the result some other way.
In the first situation, players often shoot themselves in the foot by trying to use specific skills in situations in which they are clueless. How does a player know if the Order of the Star is a matter of divine lore, arcane lore, local knowledge, or history if he doesn't recognize the name. And yet, players often respond with "can I roll a Hisory check" based on the fact that it is their highest skill and they want to roll that one.
In the second one, players treat the game world like a point-and-click adventure game. Like there's a button labeled Climb, one labeled Diplomacy, and one labeled Religious Knowledge. Again, this causes them to sometimes choose the wrong skill. But it also causes them to focus on pushing buttons instead of thinking about the living, breathing world. In the long run, this can prevent them from coming up with complex plans that combine several actions. Or considering any action that doesn't easily or obviously fit into a single skill.
This rule needs to be enforced and reinforced constantly. I like to use shame and sarcasm:
DM: "... and the guard refuses you entry to the Citadel."
Player: "Can I roll a Diplomacy check?"
DM: "Sure, knock yourself out."
Player: "27."
DM: "Wow, that's a really good roll. Anyway, that was fun, but what do you want to do about the guard?"
Player: "I meant I wanted to roll that check at the guard."
DM: "Well, he's impressed by your roll too, but he didn't bring is twenty-sided die. Besides, he's on duty and can't play dice games with you right now."
Quote from: Wisithir on June 29, 2022, 06:50:34 AM
Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/five-simple-rules-for-dating-my-teenaged-skill-system/
Rule #1: Players Can Only Declare Actions or Ask Questions
When the DM asks a player: "what do you do," there are only two valid responses. And neither one involves the name of a skill.
That's some top-notch advice from Angry GM. The role play leads and the character sheet supports. It's great. For it to work really well, players should be familiar with their characters. It can break immersion when a skilled player suggests a solution that doesn't fit his character. The dude with zero climb skill is probably not going to suggest scaling a wall.
This concept has been expressed in other ways, too. One is goal and approach. A player states his goal (get over the wall) and his approach (throw my grappling hook over it and climb the rope). The GM calls for a skill test, if necessary.